Wounded By Reality: Understanding and Treating Adult Onset Trauma

217 Pages·2007·1.92 MB·English

by  Ghislaine Boulanger

Wounded By Reality
Understanding and Treating
Adult Onset Trauma
Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series
Volume 6
Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series
DONNEL STERN, PH.D., SERIES EDITOR
Volume 1
Clinical Values:
Emotions That Guide Psychoanalytic Treatment
Sandra Buechler
Volume 2
What Do Mothers Want?
ContemporaryPerspectivesinPsychoanalysisandRelatedDisciplines
Sheila Brown
Volume 3
The Fallacy of Understanding / The Ambiguity of Change
Edgar A. Levenson
Volume 4
PrelogicalExperience:
AnInquiryintoDreams&OtherCreativeProcesses
Edward S. Tauber and Maurice R. Green
Volume 5
Prologue to Violence:
Child Abuse, Dissociation, and Crime
Abby Stein
Volume 6
Wounded By Reality:
Understanding and Treating Adult Onset Trauma
Ghislaine Boulanger
Wounded By Reality
Understanding and Treating
Adult Onset Trauma
Ghislaine Boulanger
THE ANALYTIC PRESS
2007 Mahwah, NJ London
Acknowledgment is gratefully made to:
ContemporaryPsychoanalysisforgrantingpermissiontousemate-
rialthatoriginallyappearedintwoarticlespublishedinitspages:
“TheCostofSurvival:PsychoanalysisandAdultOnsetTrauma,”38:
17–44,January2002.And“WoundedbyReality:TheCollapseofthe
SelfinAdultOnsetTrauma,”38:45–76,January2002.
Chapter 7 is an expanded and adapted version of “From Voyeur
to Witness: The Recovery of Symbolic Function after Massive Psy-
chic Trauma,” which originally appeared inPsychoanalytic Psy-
chology, 22:21–31, 2005. Copyright 2005 by the Educational
Publishing Foundation. Adapted with permission.
Chapter 9 is an expanded and adapted version of “The Strength
Found in Innocence,” which originally appeared inPsychoanaly-
sis and Psychotherapy, 20:119–136. Copyright 2003, Interna-
tional Universities Press.
The Estate of Mrs. ClaireBlundenandPFD(www.pfd.co.uk) for
permission to reproduce EdmundBlunden’spoem “1916 seen
from 1921” (© Estate of Mrs. ClaireBlunden1922).
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
Copyright © 2007 by The Analytic Press, Inc.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproduced
inanyform,byphotostat,microform,retrievalsystem,or
anyothermeans,withoutpriorwrittenpermissionofthe
publisher.
The Analytic Press, Publishers
10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430
www.erlbaum.com
Cover design byTomaiMaridou
CIPinformation for this volume may be obtained by contacting
the Library of Congress
ISBN 0-203-83779-7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 978-0-88163-430-3 — 0-88163-430-1 (cloth)
For Charles Kadushin

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Chapter 1: Toward a Psychodynamic Understanding 1
of Adult Onset Trauma
Chapter 2: Catastrophic Dissociation and Childhood Trauma: 19
Some Distinctions
Chapter 3: The Cost of Survival: Historical Perspectives 41
on Adult Onset Trauma
Chapter 4: Wounded by Reality: The Relational Turn 61
Chapter 5: The Core Self in Crisis: Deconstructing 77
Catastrophic Dissociation
Chapter 6: The Relational Self in Crisis: Further 95
Deconstructing Catastrophic Dissociation
Chapter 7: From Voyeur to Witness: The Crisis in Symbolic 113
Functioning During Catastrophic Dissociation
Chapter8:TheAncientMariner’sDilemma:Constructing 131
aTraumaNarrative
vii
viii
Chapter9:TheStrengthFoundinInnocence:Resistanceto 151
WorkingPsychodynamicallywithSurvivorsofAdultOnsetTrauma
Chapter 10: The Psychological Politics of Catastrophe: 169
Local, Personal, and Professional
References 185
Index 197
1916 seen from 1921
Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day,
I sit in solitude and only hear
Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay,
The lost intensities of hope and fear;
In those old marshes yet the rifles lie,
On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags,
The very books I read are there — and I
Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags
Its wounded length from those sad streets of war
Into green places here, that were my own.
But now what once was mine is mine no more,
I seek such neighbors here and I find none.
With such strong gentleness and tireless will
These ruined houses seared themselves in me,
Passionate I look for their dumb stories still,
And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree.
—EdmundBlunden(1921)
EdmundBlunden,“1916seenfrom1921”fromMenWhoMarchAway,I.M.Parson,ed.