Assuming good enough parenKng, we will show how the self gets constructed through the interplay of inner drives and organizing principles, and outside responses. We will study the neurobiology of secure adachment and the psychology of mentalizaon especially with regard to the formaKon of a strong and capable self. This will be the developmental template against which we will define the nature of trauma.
Trauma affects the whole body and creates miswirings, over and under development of circuits and a host of body memories that become the background upon which life is lived. Unfortunately many imbalances are self sustaining, creating detrimental feedback loops. These disturbances in the corporeal REAL are part of Bion's beta elements, floating around in dissociated states and carrying a lot of energy, that ohen derail a person's conscious life plan.
We will study the physiological dimension of trauma in terms of the main messenger pathways: neurobiology and endocrinology, with special regard to adaptive functions that adempt to keep the organism in the best achievable balance. Looking at the brain and its structure, we will show how the maladaptations formed, and also how they can be reversed with specific psychoanalytic methods. We will also examine alternative views on involving the body in treatment, and submit them to analytic discourse. Unconscious moldings of the body to distress now become expectations of how things are.
Trauma is not just directly inflicted on conscious minds. There is a transmission of unspoken horrors that is passed along generations, unconsciously and surreptiously, through actions, atitudes, word choices etc that, while innocent in themselves, are toxic because of the unknowable affect behind them. In many cases intergenerational trauma affects a whole culture which then becomes toxic to all its members. Epigenetic changes pass entire traumatic complexes down the generations, subjugating them to endless, and headless, repetions.
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