Corrective Emotional Experience in the Therapeutic Process (original) (raw)
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Rogers and Goldstein redux: The actualizing person responding to trauma and loss
Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies , 2018
Carl Rogers’ concept of actualization is discussed in relation to neuropsychiatrist Kurt Goldstein’s concept of self-actualization, both of which explain the inherent capacity of the human organism for growth through adversity. It is argued that Rogers’ organismic perspective is compatible with the existential-ontological elements of Goldstein’s holistic, biological conception of the human organism. There is, however, a fundamental difference in their concepts of actualization and their metaphors of self-healing that reflects their dissimilar clinical milieus and philosophico-existential perspectives. Rogers’ metaphor of self-healing calls up the client’s organismic experiencing in a therapeutic relationship whereas Goldstein’s refers to the patient and pathology that is an indication of lawful variations of the normal self-regulating process. Their concepts of actualization are considered in relation to six existential-ontological dimensions of human experience delineated by Hersch. It is argued that they provide a more in-depth understanding of an individual’s experiencing than the dominant biomedical models of disease. This process is illustrated by drawing on the self-reported experiences of persons with traumatic brain injury concerning the extent of their recovery and post-traumatic growth. Considered together, the legacies of Goldstein and Rogers span biology and phenomenology, existential philosophy and humanistic psychology.
Insidious Emotional Trauma: The body remembers.....
This article continues my journey into the clinical usefulness of bodily emotion and extends my earlier formulation of core affective experience (Cates, 2011) to a consideration of what I call insidious emotional trauma, a concept that is defined as the repetitive demonization of emotionality during development and beyond. The analytic treatment centers on the phenomenological investigation of bodily emotion, which is viewed as having mutative power when called into the service of development. Clinical vignettes highlight salient theoretical points: (a) the influence of mutual engagement in capturing the emotional moment from which traumatic memory materializes, (b) the shame of being as the most radical of the injurious consequences of emotional demonization, and (c) dissociation as a flight from traumatic emotional vulnerability to disembodied cognition. The closing discussion integrates the article as a whole with consideration of therapeutic change.
Accentuating the positive: Self-actualising post-traumatic growth processes
Callaghan, M. (Ed.) (2014). How trauma resonates: Art, literature, and theoretical practice. (pp. 149-162)
It is not altogether uncommon, in the aftermath of traumatic life events, for individuals and groups to report that they have had experiences and faced processes that have led to significant personal changes and positive psychological growth... This chapter offers a number of contributions to trauma theory, and specifically post-traumatic growth, that informs our fuller consideration of the role of psycho-spiritual transformation in the processes, outcomes, and management of trauma beginning with: Abraham Maslow's theory of peak experience and self-actualisation and Carl Rogers's organismic valuing process; Stanislav Grof's holotropic paradigm and formulation of psycho-spiritual transformation; the research conduted by Lawrence Calhoun and Richard Tedeschion post-traumatic growth: and, Martin Seligman and Stephen Joseph's conceptualisations of positive psychology. Together these interdisciplinary strands capture something of the a prevailing optimism and a shared understanding that the struggle of post-traumatic experience may, for some at least, offer the potential for personal growth.
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Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2018
The aim of this paper is to bring a phenomenological perspective to bear on a specific problem: how to understand the diminished sense of reality that is often reported by persons who have suffered severe and prolonged interpersonal trauma. For this purpose I turn to resources from two traditions. First, I present a phenomenological account of the intersubjective constitution of objective experience, which is then complemented by a developmental account of how the very small child comes to inhabit a world of shared mind-independent things. On this basis, I aim to show how the sense of reality, as the clear and dependable sense of the difference in experience between inner life and external reality, is an interpersonal developmental achievement that goes hand in hand with the development of the sense of self. I will in particular draw on Husserlian phenomenology and Winnicott's psychoanalytic perspective on developmental psychology.
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This study used a qualitative, exploratory approach to develop a conceptual framework that illustrated the process by which spirituality emerged as one of the processes that helped people transcend a traumatic childhood. Ninety people described how they survived and transcended the difficult time. This article outlines the stages of the developmental process that culminated for many in a deeper spiritual awareness and how this helped them in their process of transcending. These findings have implications for marriage and family therapists, clergy, and others in the helping professions in providing therapy, resources, and support for those who have experienced difficult childhoods.
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2006
This study proposes through a case illustration that psychoanalytic patients who can process both aggression and loss through a mourning process are able to free themselves from pathological self attack when the object relations work of attachment, psychic holding, and separation transpires. In the case of Helen discussed here, transformation through a ''developmental mourning process'' results in the evolution of powerful psychological capacities for interiority, self agency, and interpersonal compassion. This developmental mourning process is endowed with the assimilation and psychic fantasy symbolization of aggression.
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2006
This study proposes through a case illustration that psychoanalytic patients who can process both aggression and loss through a mourning process are able to free themselves from pathological self attack when the object relations work of attachment, psychic holding, and separation transpires. In the case of Helen discussed here, transformation through a ''developmental mourning process'' results in the evolution of powerful psychological capacities for interiority, self agency, and interpersonal compassion. This developmental mourning process is endowed with the assimilation and psychic fantasy symbolization of aggression.
Emotions and Memory - A New Method For Healing From Trauma (Psychotherapy) - Draft form
2024
Support my work: https://buy.stripe.com/cN24jE2Qvfum10ceUV A reflection on how the emotion system works in terms of its association with memory and the deeper survival/replication system. I posit that to overcome trauma - which I view as strong memories that store strong negative emotions - a person must dissolve these memories and create new ones. I lay out my perspective on how the emotional system works, how it is different from other systems which are under our direct control such as speaking and movement. This work is currently theoretical, and I've yet to test it with clients or myself even. Though it does seem sound. And I will soon apply it to my therapy work.
When trauma strikes the soul: shame, splitting, and psychic pain
American journal of psychoanalysis, 1999
Relatively little has been written on the role of trauma in conceptions of the unconscious. This paper explores Freud's conceptions of the unconscious, comparing his ideas with the original French notion of "double conscience" and exploring their implications for technique. Whereas Freud's concept of the unconscious mainly depends upon a theory of internal drives, Ferenczi's ascribed a central role to trauma, shifting the focus to the individual in the context of relationships. The comparison is illustrated with a case history.