Reknowing Trauma

Today when we talk about trauma in the psychological field, we refer to the psychic manifestations of a negative experience that leads to disorganization and dysregulation of a person’s biological system. Trauma is thus a psychic reaction, a wound, caused by a traumatic factor (or stressor) that results in an intolerable and distressing emotional impact. Importantly, the capacity to respond to trauma can vary from person to person. According to Ammaniti, trauma represents not only a rupture in everyday experience, but also a split in memory—an event that is often difficult to represent in the mind. This psychological wound may present itself as stunting and amputation of emotions, and its concreteness may persist over time, causing destabilizing mental suffering. We then saw how trauma can have negative effects not only on the psychological level, but also on the biological level, altering the functioning of our organism. Trauma can leave an unprocessed trace that leads us to continually relive the painful event. It was later specified that the reaction to trauma depends on many factors, including the magnitude of the event, the presence or absence of a support figure, the social context and the ability to share the experience. These elements influence the degree of traumatization and the ability to process the trauma. It has also been shown that cognitive processing is a key process in integrating the traumatic memory into our memory and reducing its emotional impact. If processing is hindered by disturbing emotions, the memory remains isolated and easily reactivated by similar stimuli. This can lead to symptoms of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress. Trauma can provoke a sense of guilt for having suffered the evil, for having allowed it or for having reacted to it; this guilt is often accompanied by shame and self-hatred. This can happen especially if the trauma occurred in childhood; it is described also as the phenomenon that Azieau called “negative attachment” and is based on an attachment to negative, rejecting, or mistreating affective figures. It was then pointed out that trauma is not always determinative of our life trajectory.