Enduring Trauma Through the Life Cycle

This is a multi-authored book on the complex subject of psychic trauma as encountered at different stages of the life-cycle, and describes some of the clinical challenges, technical issues and differing theoretical approaches that arise when working with the traumatized individual. The concept of psychic trauma is a complex subject, but one which has more recently gained prominence. This book contains a collection of papers which grew out of a series of talks given by the Psychoanalytic Forum of the British Psychoanalytical Society entitled Trauma Through the Life Cycle.

The authors, all highly respected authorities in their fields, give insights into what we mean by psychic trauma, what constitutes a traumatic event, and the psychopathological sequelae to trauma at different stages of life. Judith Trowell and Nick Midgley look at the effects of infantile and childhood traumas. Catalina Bronstein and Sara Flanders, from differing psychoanalytic perspectives, consider how childhood traumas can become reactivated in adolescence and colour subsequent developmental situations. Ron Britton and Joanne Stubley consider the effects of trauma on time and memory, the concept of Nachtralichkeit, and Britton makes the distinction between endogenous and exogenous aspects of trauma. Arturo Varchevker and Isky Gordon consider what factors may be intrinsically traumatic for the person reaching old age, illness or death. Francis Grier considers a more recently acknowledged source of trauma, which is the hidden nature of the cumulative trauma of the child who is sent away early to boarding school and its effects on the developing adult’s capacity for intimate couple relationships. Finally, Michael Brierley and Nicholas Stargardt both write convincingly on societal traumas, Brierley on the social and cultural traumas endured by the native American Indian tribe, the Crow, and how individual experiences resonated with group experiences, and the historian, Stargardt, on his ground-breaking work on the experiences of German children during the Second World War.