Introduction

The nature of those coming to the service has changed significantly over the years, but the essential element of trauma inflicted from outside, in external reality, remains. Hence the Tavistock Clinic was established as a centre drawing substantially on psychoanalytic thought in its clinical services, teaching, and research activities. Re-integration requires facing the avoidance and numbing that is central to the aftermath of trauma, and that can so easily shut down external connections with the social world. The concrete reality of a changed body at a time when “ordinary” bodily changes require negotiation can impair mourning and thereby impair being able to move forward beyond traumatic past experiences. Joanne Stubley focuses on the potential for re-traumatization among our complex trauma patients. Unravelling this within a therapeutic community posed significant problems for both staff and residents, as repeating traumatic identifications wove a path into the internal and then external relationships of the men.