ABSTRACT
This trialogue describes the essential role of the other in the healing of trauma and the restoration of distorted truths. Mucci begins with Laub's (1992) claim that severely traumatized individuals had lost the internal witness. Trauma caused by human agency results in the destruction of the human bond, and also, in order to psychically survive – in the distortion of truth.
Truth is redeemed by the “embodied witnessing” of an other. Mucci describes the neurobiological aspect of this process, which involves complex mirroring, right brain communication, and empathic intervention.
Becker responds with a deeply moving vignette, and suggests that “truth is in the I-You relation, and the relation is in truth. They are one until the moment of trauma, where the psyche cannot fill in the missing parts to complete the picture of union. The crack is too deep to be mended.”
From this evocative formulation, Barnea-Astrog then draws a possible new angle on the definition of trauma caused by human agency: “interpersonal trauma entails a schism between truth and relation, too deep to negotiate or bridge or reconcile. Healing, therefore, involves their reunion”. This reunion entails “a dynamic relation of non-exclusion, of co-existence and co-creation that is reinstituted or reclaimed”.
