The traumatic memory debate: A failure in scientific communication and cooperation

Perhaps no other topic in recent history has generated such emotionality as the ongoing traumatic memory debate involving alleged reports of physical and sexual abuse. The literature on this topic is replete with reliance on anecdotal statements, unwarranted and grossly overstated generalizations, emotionally laden conclusions, attacks and counterattacks. This state of affairs has resulted in creating a polarization between cognitive memory researchers and clinical researchers who are attempting to resolve the debate through scientific inquiry. Unfortunately, the databases on both sides of the issue are weak. The purpose of this article is to highlight the key issues at the center of this debate in an attempt to move the debate forward. It is argued that resolution of this debate can only be achieved by conducting appropriately designed clinical research with a population of traumatically abused subjects. To achieve this objective, both sides need to suppress their emotional rhetoric, open lines of communication, and engage in cooperative research efforts. This issue is too important for both the field of psychology and society as a whole to remain polarized and unresolved.     

John Muir and the Erotization of Nature

John Muir (1838–1914) wrote about nature sensuously and erotically. Born in Scotland and raised by a harsh Calvinist father in rural Wisconsin, John was sadistic to animals and suffered childhood trauma which was almost lethal. As an adult he was a leader of environmental protection, founded the Sierra Club, and is responsible for Yosemite National Park and the growth of America's national park system. The author brings to bear empathic counter-transference considerations from the development of his own erotization of nature in his effort to understand Muir. The irony of national parks is their success—nature has been humanized. Where Muir's intention was to protect the wilderness, the parks now cater to millions of people who abuse, contaminate, and destroy it.     

EMDR and Emotionally Oriented Couples Therapy

When reviewing past and current research on the role of emotion in couples therapy, there appeared to be a lack of articulation concerning how emotional expressions and relational dynamics are affected by emotional trauma that has not been accessed. The authors demonstrate how emotionally and experientially oriented therapy with couples can be enhanced by accessing stored trauma through the use of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). This approach is called Eye Movement Relationship Enhancement (EMRE) therapy and includes key clinical areas such as accessing and tolerating previously disowned emotion, reprocessing emotional experiences, and amplifying couple intimacy. These key areas are discussed and illustrated with case examples.     

Early Childhood Traumatic Development and Its Impact on Gender Identity

The author clarifies issues of gender identity typical to contemporary Western societies. Nowadays, we tend to emphasize self-autonomy as the main target of the individual's development. In adolescence this may cause many questions as to the adolescent's conception of his or her gender and sexual identity. These questions are the outcome of early development, and thus early traumas may impact the entire gender development. In this context, trauma includes not only major violations such as sexual abuse, terror attacks, and so forth, but also comprises events heretofore considered minor.     

Trauma and Deferred Action in the Reality of Adolescence

In the search for ever earlier determinants of adult pathology many ignore the transformative impact of adolescence. The authors suggest that the reality of adolescent development creates a vulnerability to being overwhelmed. Through deferred action childhood experiences may interact with adolescent realities and omnipotent beliefs to traumatize the adolescent. The authors suggest that trauma in adolescence can be independent both of the intensity of current external exposure or of earlier traumatic experiences.     

Psychological Trauma in Adolescence: Familial Disillusionment and Loss of Personal Identity

This article presents trauma theory and characteristics of traumatized adolescents. A case vignette demonstrates the considerations regarding assessment and treatment strategies in clinical work with an adolescent girl who suffered profound trauma, loss of personal identity, and self-esteem due to familial disillusionment. In contrast, the author presents the case of a female Holocaust survivor, documenting catastrophic loss, also during adolescence. Irrespective of the nature and magnitude of trauma, the single most outstanding predictor of future positive adjustment and resilience was the nature of the parent-child tie.     

Applying Psychoanalysis to Couple Therapy: The Treatment of a Couple with Sexualized Persecutory Internal Objects Resulting from Trauma

The application of psychoanalytic theory and technique to the treatment of couples has been relatively overlooked despite the long history of concern by psychoanalysts with the role of marriage in individual development and suffering. This paper uses an example of marital and sex therapy to illustrate the application of psychoanalytic object relations theory to couple therapy, and describes the way that in-depth treatment of the couple's persecutory object relations that follow severe trauma can be effectively conducted. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of issues of shame and guilt in psychoanalytic theory and their relevance to this couple.     

Understanding Children with War-Zone Traumatic Stress Exposed to the World's Violent Environments

This article discusses the common and unique configurations of stress responses of children to traumatizing experience in the world's warzones like Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Rwanda, Liberia, Mozambique, El Salvador, the Middle East, and other nations caught up in the throes of declared and undeclared wars. Children are the most vulnerable, and suffer the greatest. The new concepts of warzone traumatic stress (WZTrS) and warzone traumatherapy (WZTrT) are presented to expand the discussion of the treatment of warzone children beyond today's exclusive focus either on intrapsychic factors alone or on material-resource replenishing alone. These terms are an alternative to current approaches to treatment in which a discrete stressor has been identified as the responsible toxic agent that produced the child's symptoms. Most warzone children have experienced a multiplicity of stressors—a virtual matrix of violent war stressors. The WZTrT model recognizes that the mental, social, and cultural needs of traumatized children change over time—from the time they are exposed to raging toxic war stressors to the time when war hostilities end. Thus warzone traumatherapy attempts to address the child's needs on a continuum based upon a time-referenced intervention model. The model presented here acknowledges the child's adaptational strengths, and the multitheoretical employing of psychodynamic, cognitive, and behavioral techniques grounded in cultural/racial sensitivity and indigenous folk medicine as indispensable tools in warzone therapy for children. Additionally, the model takes into account the special features of relevant international policies of the United Nations (UN) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) geared to assist in the recovery and integration of warzone traumatized children. WZTrT embraces Western models of interventions integratively and flexibly employed with the personal, cultural, social, spiritual, and economic factors existing in the world of the traumatized child. Hopefully, the article will contribute to creating innovative ways of conceptualizing the mental, physical, social, cultural, and economic needs of warzone children in order to advance conceptual, technical, scientific, and practical aspects of child-relevant warzone interventions.     

Trauma, Shame, and Group Psychotherapy: A Self Psychology Perspective

This paper attempts to define trauma from a self psychology/intersubjective perspective and explores shame as a basic aspect of trauma. Self psychologically oriented group therapy is examined as an effective treatment modality for dealing with issues of shame as well as the after effects of trauma.