Abstract
Using the 7-year psychotherapy of a Holocaust survivor, this paper explores the sometimes contradictory aspects of approaches to trauma. Conceptualizing a “self in pain” as an alternative to contemporary conceptualizations of the traumatized person as having a damaged, dissociated or collapsed self leads to a corresponding alternative clinical approach. The paradoxes of traumatic memory and testimony necessitate an adaptational emphasis and the emergence of a “doubled” in contrast to a dissociated self. The decision to respect this “doubled” self involves a privileging of “reality” over “psychic reality” which then, paradoxically enables this patient to develop a phantasy life.
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This paper was first presented as the inaugural colloquium of the Specialization Training in Trauma and Disaster Studies of the New York University Post Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy on January 25, 2008 and again as part of a panel at the Division 39 Convention “Viva Psychoanalysis” in San Antonio, Texas on April 25, 2009.
1Ph.D., ABPP, Adjunct Associate Clinical Professor, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, New York City.
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Prince, R. The Self in Pain: The Paradox of Memory. The Paradox of Testimony. Am J Psychoanal 69, 279–290 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/ajp.2009.19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ajp.2009.19