ABSTRACT
In contrast to both the trauma community’s focus on the precipitating event, posttraumatic symptoms, and neurobiology and the psychoanalytic community’s focus on Freudian concepts of id, ego, superego, overstimulation, and stimulus barrier, SAO/TEND’s trauma perspective emphasizes the subjective, intrapsychic, and relational traumatic experience. Psychic trauma is the broken resiliency of intrapsychic structure, resulting from one’s inability to maintain intrapsychic integrity in the face of an encounter which has (intentionally or not) challenged that integrity. Primary traumatic events (PTEs) are breaks in linking between any Self-Affect (S-A) segment and its corresponding Other [(S-A)-O]. Traumatic state is the aftermath of those PTEs. The resultant flooding of Affect, linked with its effects on corresponding Self subcomponents, may take on a secondary autonomy and may precipitate other traumatic events, possibly even a traumatic cascade.
Primary trauma and secondary trauma are differentiated from each other. Ancillary traumatic event (ATE) and autonomous trauma are defined and elaborated upon. Fear of one’s emotions may take on a phobic quality and be multi-determined. The dynamics of Self–Other (S-O) relationships, along with their subsequent relational realities, are examined. Manifestations of these effects in daily life and in treatment are presented.
