Understanding Trauma A Psychoanalytical Approach

Revised edition with additional chapter. This book, from the Tavistock Clinic Series, is about what follows the breakdown in functioning, either short or longer-term, provoked by a traumatic event. The authors offer a psychoanalytical understanding of the meaning of the trauma for an individual, illuminating theory with detailed clinical illustration and case histories. A range of therapeutic procedures is described. Major disasters draw attention forcibly to their effects on the survivors. Less often recognised are the long-term after-effects of the huge number and variety of more private events, either accidental or deliberately inflicted, on an individual's subsequent emotional and working life. This book is about what follows the breakdown in functioning, either short or longer-term, provoked by a traumatic event. What is distinctive about this book is that its authors offer a psychoanalytical understanding of the meaning of the trauma for an individual, illuminating theory with detailed clinical illustration and case histories.

Series Editors' Preface -- Introduction -- Introduction -- Thinking About Trauma -- Human Error -- Assessment and Consultation -- The Psychodynamic Assessment of Post-Traumatic States -- Preliminary Interventions -- Treatment in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy -- Trauma and Grievance -- Mental Work in a Trauma Patient -- Issues in Treatment -- Dreaming After a Traumatic Bereavement -- Identificatory Processes in Trauma -- Psychoanalysis -- Developmental Injury -- External Injury and the Internal World -- Groups -- The Traumatised Group -- Action, Identification and Thought in Post-traumatic States