Memory
« Previous EntriesAdult State of Consciousness to Help Patients Release Trauma
Thursday, December 29th, 2011Psychotherapists use many different methods to facilitate recovery and integration of repressed trauma from intrinsic memory. I prefer the body centered desensitization technique to bring painful and frightening memories into conscious awareness and release the emotional charge on them, along with Voice Dialogue, journaling exercises and Inner Child work to […]
Identification with the Aggressor
Thursday, December 15th, 2011Abused children tend to go on inflicting what they have suffered on themselves or others. Psychoanalysts described this behavior pattern as identification with the aggressor. If we look at the pattern adaptively as well as defensively, however, it might be regarded as a confused and self-destructive attempt to master the […]
Premature Uncovering
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011Therapy can jump the tracks if misguided and premature or aggressive attempts are made to uncover traumatic memories before a secure trusting relationship has been established with a severely abused patient and before the ego integrity of the patient has been adequately assessed. In Connie’s case in Chapter Six Of Big […]
Protective Presence
Thursday, December 8th, 2011Clinical observation of young children in London during World War II indicated that they could pass through prolonged and extreme stresses, like nightly bombing raids requiring that they be snatched from their beds and taken to air raid shelters, with little evidence of lasting trauma provided that they remained in the […]
Uncovering Traumatic Memories
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011For the recovery of traumatic memories from childhood to be truly healing, the basic requirement is a warm and safe therapeutic relationship structured with clear boundaries to minimize stress and prevent retraumatization. The intent is to allow the patient to revisit childhood in the very atmosphere of care and appropriate […]
Sigmund Freud Contributions
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011While neurobiology uses new language and brain imaging data instead of psychotherapeutic observations to support its conclusions, Sigmund Freud anticipated the broad outline of the neurobiological rationale for the uncovering process in psychotherapy a century ago. Freud drew the distinction between unconscious (implicit) and conscious (explicit) memory and developed a […]
Psychotherapy
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011Normalizing dysfunctional neurochemical responses with medication does not deal with the charged content of traumatic memories or the effect of those memories on the functioning of the personality. The healer must also help the patient bring the memory content to consciousness and integrate it so that it is no longer […]
Traumatic Memories
Tuesday, October 25th, 2011PTSD is a chronic and very disabling condition that does not yield simply to psychopharmacologic treatment. As an integrative psychiatrist, I use medications with my psychiatric patients primarily when their symptoms are so severe as to interfere significantly with psychotherapy as well as with day to day coping in response […]
Each Lifetime is a Custom-Designed Course
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011Life lessons are determined before conception so that each lifetime becomes a custom-designed course of study addressing a unique set of Karmic patterns. These patterns guide the circumstances into which we are born. We become intimately aware of these circumstances and the concerns of our parents at the time they are […]
Impact of Abuse in the Psychological Dimension
Tuesday, December 28th, 2010The child of an abusive parent can reach another conclusion is that submission to abuse is the price one pays for love. Such a belief will distort the child’s personality formation. Children resort to such misunderstandings in a vain attempt to deny feeling helpless and to make sense of the pain […]
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