Main description:

Approaches to Psychic Trauma: Theory and Practice covers the many developments in the relatively new field of trauma therapy. It examines the nature of the wide variety of treatments available for traumatized people, describing elements they have in common and those that are specific to each treatment. Originating with the editor's clinical experience working with patients from the former German Democratic Republic, contributors then discuss alternative therapies including ego psychology, self psychology, object-relations theory, attachment theory, psychoanalysis, and art therapies. Case studies further illustrate the application and practice.
Approaches to Psychic Trauma presents a diversity of theories and tools centering on trauma and history, and through the microcosm of individual personalities one may have a close-up view of how historical events, as well as personal narratives and reactions to them, consciously and unconsciously affect the individual.

Contents:

Part I: A General Introduction to the Nature of Trauma
1. On the Development of the Concept of Trauma: Definition, Elements and Relevant Terms
Bernd Huppertz
2. The Psychiatric Approach, the Subgroups of Posttraumatic Syndromes and the Neurobiology of Stress and Trauma
Bernd Huppertz

Part II: Dimensions of Trauma
3. Development and Trauma: Recapitulation of Traumatic Themes in Early Interaction
Louise Newman
4. Historical and Intergenerational Trauma: Radioactive Transmission of the Burdens of History - Destructive versus Creative Transmission
Yolanda Gampel
5. The Reality of Horror: Psychic Survival in the Face of Massive Trauma
Louise Newman
6. The Role of Cumulative Micro-trauma in Psychic Life: An Abridged Description of Injurious Relational Functioning
Margaret Crastnopol
7. Building Resilience: The Example of Ambiguous Loss
Pauline Boss

Part III: Social Psychological Aspects of the Totalitarian Communist System.
8. Political Psychology, Effects of Historical Processes and Cultural Trauma
Bernd Huppertz
9. Socio-Historical Overview of Germany: the Development of the Federal Republic of Germany (GFR) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR)
Bernd Huppertz
10. The False Self
Adrian Sutton
11. Totalitarian and Post-Totalitarian Matrices: Reflective Citizens Facing Social-Psychic Retreats
Marina Mojovic
12. A Post-Totalitarian Group: A Collective False Self or Post-Traumatic Growth?
Helena Klimova

Part IV: Clinical Material
Bernd Huppertz
13. Case History Summaries
14. Mr. Q
15. Mrs. U
16. Mr. R
17. Mrs. O
18. Mrs. P
19. Mrs. M
20. Mrs. N
21. Mrs. B

Part V: Trauma Treatment Grounded in Psychodynamic-Psychoanalytic Approaches
22. Challenges of Treatment with Traumatized Individuals from a Modern Freudian Perspective
Anna Balas
23. Trauma and Inner Reality: a Kleinian and Post-Kleinian Perspective
Mariangela Mendes de Almeida
24. Trauma Treatment from the Winnicottian Perspective
Adrian Sutton
25. Theoretical and Clinical Implications of the Concept of the Zero Process: An Ego-Psychology Perspective
Joseph Fernando
26. Extreme Traumatization: Conceptualization and Treatment from the Perspective of Object-Relations and Modern Research
Sverre Varvin
27. Contemporary Self Psychology and Its Treatment of Traumatized Patients
Koichi Togashi and Amanda Kottler
28. Relational Psychoanalysis and Trauma: The Significance of Witnessing and Containing
Adrienne Harris
29. Trauma Work via the Lens of Attachment Theory - "Gas Light": Reality Distortion by Familiar Attachment Figures
Orit Badouk Epstein

Part VI: Arts Therapies
30. Mentalizing or "Meaning-Making" in Music Therapy with Traumatised Children
Jacqueline Robarts
31. Trauma Work in Play and Drama Therapy: The Importance of the Theatre of Resilience
Sue Jennings

Part VII: Other Trauma Treatment Approaches
32. Mentalization and Its Role in Processing Trauma
Nicolas Lorenzini, Chloe Campbell and Peter Fonagy
33. The Treatment of Trauma: The Neurosequential Model and "Take Two"
Annette Jackson, Margarita Frederico, Allison Cox and Carly Black

Part VIII: Summary and Outlook
Chapter 34: Conclusions
Bernd Huppertz