ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates an important phenomenon that can determine how a person reacts to sudden trauma, namely the presence of previous traumas whose emotional significance has been kept out of awareness. Rees describes how, in two high-functioning patients being seen in intensive treatment, the trauma of 9/11 may have suddenly brought back to life memories of previous major traumatizations that had heretofore lain sequestered in quasi-dissociation; that is, the traumatic events had been known about cognitively but possessed little emotional content. Rees thus reports an important experiment in nature insofar as the existence of the ongoing alliance enabled a closer monitoring of the processes involved than otherwise would have been possible. The experience of terror was required as a trigger for feelings associated with the childhood memory. In terms of internal psychological processes, Rees articulates how the combination of fresh trauma and old memory creates a new memory of what happened in the past, one that is emotionally laden.
