ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with three things, intimately connected with each other: first, trauma; second, action, and in particular the kind of action that is driven by identifications of various kinds. And the third concern is thought, and the connections between trauma, action, and thought. After a trauma, identification tends to replace thought. Moreover, thought and action about the trauma exist in a reciprocal relation to each other, in that both are attempts to deal with the same specific event, or series of events, involving trouble between the self and the object. The chapter proposes a description of how and a suggestion as to why, this should happen so regularly and so often permanently in post-traumatic states. Patients who have survived a traumatic event demonstrate repeatedly that even a well-developed symbolic/thinking capacity will give way under extreme stress. The chapter explores the relationship between identification and symbolisation a little further, through two longer clinical examples involving real trauma.
