ABSTRACT
The Posttraumatic Self: Restoring Meaning and Wholeness to Personality is a book that represents an attempt to provide a framework of a positive psychology of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). At first glance the idea of a positive psychology of trauma and PTSD seems like a contradiction in terms and the opposite of the emotional reality for those who suffer. How can there be a positive psychology of horrific consequences of psychic trauma? After all, the word trauma originates from the ancient Greek word for “injury.” Trauma, usually inflicted from an external source, causes damage, a loss of well-being, and a change in physical or mental status that is painful, aversive, and may result in a condition of prolonged traumatization. In this same mind set, we have traditionally spoken about the process of healing wounds, recovery, and the resumption of normal functioning. In medicine and psychology, the processes of healing and recovery meant that the victim of trauma overcame their illness and got better, assuming more control and autonomy in life, and experiencing fewer residual symptoms of their illness. In terms of PTSD, a recently codified stress disorder related to trauma (DSM-III, 1980), recovery from the illness usually implied that the symptoms dissipated, resolved, or no longer had the power to disrupt daily living (Wilson, Friedman, & Lindy, 2001). In fact, the official criterion for defining PTSD as a disorder is that: “the disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning” (p. 468). By this logic, PTSD as a disorder can cause impairment in functioning which may be hidden, subtle, overt, covert or floridly dramatic, and evident for all to see in its maladaptive or unusual deviance from everyday behavior. When a PTSD illness gets “cured” or is no longer actively causing impairments in daily life, does that suggest that the person is healthy, fully-functioning and working at an optimal level of their human potential? Is the absence of psychopathology the same thing as optimal fitness and capacity for self-actualization? Is the reduction or amelioration of trauma-related symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, depression, phobias, substance dependence, etc., the same thing as positive, fully functioning behavior? When the symptoms of PTSD, such as nightmares, flashbacks, traumatic memories, hypervigilance, sleep disturbance, and social avoidance of others, dissipate in their power to cause painful emotional distress, has the person restored wholeness and become psychically integrated? When psychic trauma attacks the inner fabric of the self-structure, shredding it into pieces like a tattered and battle-torn uniform of an infantry soldier, how does it get put back together? How does the individual engage in a process of change, creating a new posttraumatic self, a reinvented architecture of oneself with a capacity to grow from the horrors and perils of trauma? How do resilient survivors find the pathways to meaning and wholeness in their lives? What does the inner world of a healthy and transcendent survivor look like in its rich tapestry of self-reinvention? What are the secrets to the success of such a survivor in living an authentic life, “in the moment,” with humanity, courage, wisdom, knowledge, humility, forgiveness, a sense of justice, and the capacity for humanness that is awe-inspiring to others?
