ABSTRACT

Trauma, Guilt and Reparation identifies the emotional barriers faced by people who have experienced severe trauma, as well as the emergence of reparative processes which pave the way from impasse to development.

The book explores the issue of trauma with particular reference to issues of reparation and guilt. Referencing the original work of Klein and others, it examines how feelings of persistent guilt work to foil attempts at reparation, locking trauma deep within the psyche. It provides a theoretical understanding of the interplay between feelings of neediness with those of fear, wrath, shame and guilt, and offers a route for patients to experience the mourning and forgiveness necessary to come to terms with their own trauma. The book includes a Foreword by John Steiner.

Illustrated by clinical examples throughout, it is written by an author whose empathy and experience make him an expert in the field. The book will be of great interest to psychotherapists, social workers and any professional working with traumatized individuals.

chapter 1|23 pages

Trauma, guilt and reparation

A psychoanalytic paradigm

chapter 2|20 pages

Impediments to reparation

Resentment, shame and wrath – the significance of the gaze

chapter 3|19 pages

Repetition compulsion and the primitive super-ego

Attempts at reparation in borderline patients

chapter 4|17 pages

The ‘Tower’

Submission and illusory security in a traumatic defence organisation

chapter 6|10 pages

Traumatic remembering and ecliptic forgetting

On the riddle of time in Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days

chapter 7|17 pages

Reparation and gratitude