Published in International Body Psychotherapy Journal The Art and Science of Somatic Praxis. (formerly US Association for Body Psychotherapy Journal)
Received on 22/07/2013. Revised 120/1/2014
Abstract
This essay presents an integrated approach to treating traumatic transference dynamics. Our theory integrates findings from the family therapy literature, principally the contributions of Murray Bowen; new understandings about memory from the field of neuropsychology, most clearly expressed in the writings of James Grigsby; and insights into the behaviour of the autonomic nervous systems of people after they have been stressed or traumatized, as modeled by Peter Levine. Our work integrates these three literatures into an approach to addressing the complex interpersonal dynamics that arise when psychotherapists work with clients who have experienced a particular class of traumas which we call “in-group traumas”, which is to say, those clients who have a history of involvement in traumatic incidents in their families, schools, churches or other tightly knit groups. Because of the close and ongoing nature of relationships in these groups, memories of traumatic experiences in such environments can be more complex than memories of car accidents, surgeries, or even an attack by a stranger. We propose a way to conceptualize these memories of “in-group” traumas. To do so, we rely on five ideas: 1) It is useful to simplify people’s behavior during a traumatic event into four roles: Savior, Victim, Bystander, Perpetrator. A single individual might play more than one role, even during the same event. 2) Individuals playing any of these four roles can develop posttraumatic symptoms. 3) Traumatic reenactment can be accounted for through the mechanism of projective identification. 4) During a traumatic event, we remember not so much what happened to us alone, but rather our subjective interpretation of the entire traumatic event itself; we remember the scene of the crime. 5) Healing from a complex relational trauma requires integrating all four posttraumatic roles and, through them, the whole of the traumatic event. Identifying with one of the roles and disidentifying with the others, as is usual, leaves clients with a superficial misinterpretation of what they actually remembered because, during the original traumatic event, they also remembered what they imagined at that moment to have been the experience of others present. To conclude, we describe the implications of this interpretation for clinical interventions. Throughout, we use a (fictional) case study accessible to any reader, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1961 psychological thriller, Marnie.
