Wounded By Reality: Understanding and Treating Adult Onset Trauma

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Title Wounded By Reality: Understanding and Treating Adult Onset Trauma
Publication Type Book
Pub Year 2011
Authors Boulanger, G.
Number of Pages 207
Publisher Taylor & Francis
Keywords job loss, meaning, psychic trauma
Abstract The culmination of three decades of studying and treating survivors of adult onset trauma, Wounded by Reality is the first systematic attempt to differentiate adult onset trauma from childhood trauma, with which it is frequently confused. When catastrophic events overtake adult lives, they often scar the psyche in ways that psychodynamically oriented clinicians struggle to understand. For Ghislaine Boulanger, the enormous challenge of working with these patients is unsurprising. Survivors of major catastrophe, whether a natural disaster, a life-threatening assault, a serious accident, or an act of terrorism, experience a near-fatal disruption of fundamental aspects of self experience. The sense of agency, of affectivity, of bodily integrity, the capacity for self-reflection, the sense of time, and the ability to relate to others - all are called into question.
Notes meaning"Finding a way to tell trauma is always a tricky business. Whether it's a memoir, a biography, or a narrative spoken to a therapist, finding the words to describe it, to relive it, to bear witness to it, and ultimately to make meaning of it, is no small feat. Sometimes words are too much, sounding shrill or mawkish; more often they are not enough, becoming numb and impersonal. Either way, meaning has been leeched out of them." job loss"The loss of a job or the prospect of a divorce suddenly evokes terror that existence will be extinguished; the patient believes she can no longer exist without these defining relationships." (p. 34)
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