ABSTRACT
Chronic traumatization impacts the development of the personality. Attachment is the basis for development of emotion regulation, mentalization and a positive self-image. When children are traumatized by their parents, their unsafe attachment relationships block this development. The parent mirrors the wrong things and the child becomes underdeveloped. Children use a wide range of psychological survival mechanisms. To ensure the connection to the parent, they for example act perfect, fight or meet their parent’s needs. Children can blame themselves and feel shame, so they can continue to idealize the parent who needs to take care of them. These psychological survival mechanisms help the child to maintain the connection to the parent, imperative for his survival. When the child struggles with great internal conflicts, they can use structural dissociation and divide their personality to solve this conflict. This helps the child survive traumatizing circumstances, but the lack of integration creates problems when the child is safe. Trauma-related conversion is be regarded as a form of somatoform dissociation.
