ABSTRACT
Among the critical theoretical questions for the field of traumatology is the issue of how trauma affects the structure and dynamics of normal personality functioning. What types of trauma generate the most severe impact on the structure of personality as it exists at the time of the event? Is it possible to predict which types of traumatic stressors will cause the greatest changes in personality functioning? For example, we know from epidemiological studies (Breslau, 1998) that the stresses associated with interpersonal violence, sexual assault, and domestic trauma produce relatively high rates of PTSD and comorbidity (Kessler, Sonnega, Bromet, Hughes, & Nelson, 1995). These findings make sense and are expectable because the traumatic stressors associated with acts of interpersonal violence violate the physical and psychological integrity of the person, i.e., they are “frontal assaults” to integrated personality functioning. But what about other types of trauma that vary in their degree of psychological invasiveness? Would we expect to see significant alterations in the measurable dimensions of personality in survivors of a hurricane that destroyed their homes and property? A survivor of a frightening but noninjurious motor vehicle accident? An adolescent who lives in a home with abusive, chronic alcoholic parents? A spouse who had been repeatedly subjected to domestic violence? A person who witnessed from a safe distance the attack and collapse of the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001 in New York City? A spouse, relative, or friend who witnessed a loved one being beheaded by terrorist extremists? A mother who watched her infant daughter starve to death in the genocidal warfare in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2004? A 20-year-old soldier who lost his arms and was severely wounded in a terrorist car-bomb attack in Baghdad during the Iraq war in 2004?
