Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development: An Intersubjective, Object Relations Listening Perspective on Self, Attachment, Trauma, and Reality

Description

Traditionally, trauma has been defined as negatively impacting external events, with resulting damage. This book puts forth an entirely different thesis: trauma is universal, occurring under even the best of circumstances and unavoidably sculpting the very building blocks of character structure. In Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development, Dr. Carl Shubs depathologizes the experience of trauma by presenting a listening perspective which helps recognize the presence and effects of traumatic experiences of normal development (TEND) by using a reconstruction of object relations theory. This outlook redefines trauma as the breach in intrapsychic organization of Self, Affect, and Other (SAO), the three components of object relations units, which combine to form intricate and changeable constellations that are no less than the total experience of living in any given moment. Bridging the gap between the trauma and analytic communities, as well as integrating intrapsychic and relational frameworks, the SAO/ TEND perspective provides a trauma-based band of attunement for attending to all relational encounters including those occurring in therapy. Though targeted to mental health professionals, this book will help enable therapists and sophisticated lay readers alike to recognize the impact of relational encounters, providing new tools to understand the traumas we have experienced and to minimize the hold they have on us. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of contents Figures Tables Preface Note References Acknowledgements Part I Character structure 1 Listening perspectives and object relations foundations The premise Infants, traumatic meanings, and an integrated listening stance Foundations of listening perspectives Notes References 2 Object relations reconsidered Listening perspectives regarding intrapsychic organization and development Object relations defined and reconstructed Treatment implications Notes References Part II Trauma re-examined and redefined 3 The traumatic moment Trauma reassessed Primary and secondary trauma Stretch, strain, breach, and their relational contexts Trauma and the mind–body relationship Notes References 4 Splitting, part 1 Affects, splitting, repression, contingency categorization, and biology Note References 5 Predator Other Intrapsychic predation Shelly and her Predator Other (PO) experience Dirty deals done in desperation Psychopathic sadism in the Self-Other (S-O) interchange Evil Disorders of knowing Loss of omnipotence and the birth of the PO Templates for TEND listening and the Stockholm Syndrome of infancy Bill and his true-self/false-self power struggle Perverse modes of relatedness Dissociation, fragmentation, and self-states Predator—the movie Identification-knowing and the PO Self harm and the PO Content, context, and shifting self-states Notes References 6 Splitting, part 2 Trauma-derived foundations of splitting Ambivalence Birth of the false-self and evolution of its secondary autonomy Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn Guilt, anxiety, and shame Trauma’s effects on the interplay between psyche and soma TEND foundations of affects, maturity, and splitting Alexithymia Cumulative traumas and their effects on mind and body Mourning the loss of primary objects Notes References 7 Trauma and intrapsychic organization revisited References Part III Self and attachment 8 Object relations Trauma and alexithymia Developmental vs. incident trauma Schemas and traumatic dissociation Doomsday orientation Safety, security, subjectivity, and their interpersonal, intrapsychic contexts Alienation from self and Bion’s conception and pre-conception Interpersonal space, experience potential, and alternative Others (alt-Os) Going on being and the experience of too much Notes References Part IV Denial and not knowing revisited 9 Disavowals “Thou shalt not know thy self, and thou shalt not know the other” Denial and symbolic thought Primary and secondary process cognition Primary and secondary disavowal Attacks on linking Terminology reconsiderations Poisonous pedagogy and covert methods of interpersonal control Notes References 10 SAO/TEND retrospective Affects, emotions, dissociation, and attacks on linking Trauma, normal development, and reality Therapeutic implications Notes References Index