ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors discuss various aspects of the structure and functions of an organization in which traumatic experience is ubiquitous. This organization exists in the highly specialized and minority field of intellectual disability. The organization was established in order to provide psychotherapy for people with intellectual disabilities who had experienced or perpetrated abuse, often, but not always, of a sexual nature. The authors focus on the way in which traumatic aspects of intellectual disability impinged on the development of the organization and suggest some parallel processes between disability and how the organization functions. They consider the significance of E. Hopper’s fourth basic assumption, “Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification”, or “I: A/M”, in relation to the work of the organization, especially at a time of particular crisis. The authors describe the emerging sense of hope that allowed the organization to rediscover its creativity and continue to develop.
