As a therapist, Louis Breger introduced the tenacity to revive a relationship that had the following principles: believe the subjective truth, empathy, approval and devotion. He translated these principles into listening, providing multiple interpretations as well as positive confrontation. He allowed for an experience that brought back emotional materials that were” lost” to Yael, in terms of her early experiences and her sense of herself as a present and surviving woman. He helped create an existential experience that needed to be recovered because of trauma caused by what I call Attachment “wounds”
How do intersubjective therapists define trauma?
Schneider (2005) defines trauma as events in which there is both loss and fear. An occurrence in which the individual loses the ability for internal order and this confusion leads to the sort of primitive understandings that might have been effective before the trauma. He claims that the more the cognitive emotional system is reduced, the better it can take on stress.
And thus the differences in the various reactions that people have to the very same occurrences. Traumatic effects will reveal these sort of responses: Kahan (1963, in Schneider 2005) states that trauma caused in childhood, one that has traumatic effects, is the result of a mother who failed in her role to defend or create a shield in the developmental process of her child. These effects will not be revealed or seen. They will develop silently and invisibly. Kahan claims that a lack of protection from the mother creates an on-going trauma in her children – emotional as well as on an interpersonal level.
In his article about trauma, Haim Weinberg (Weinberg, Nuttman-Shwartz and Gilmore, 2005) explains what the symptoms are that develop as a result of trauma (what is known as PTSD: post traumatic stress disorder). According to Klein and Shermer (Weinberg, Nuttman-Shwartz, and Gilmore, 2005) the symptoms are:
• Recreation of the traumatic experience (nightmares, stress). Avoidance, detachment and hypersensitivity.
• Changes in the basic assumptions of the world which means: erosion of the belief in the “significant other”. A feeling of helplessness, shame and guilt. Taking on the role of “the victim”.
• Changes in the internal self object. Dependency, over use of disassociation. Projection and identification. Lack of cohesiveness of the self. False-self and loss of self-esteem.
The intersubjectives claim that trauma is not pathology, but the lack of empathy, not enough listening to the pain and what might be causing the trauma (Govrin, 2004). The way one relates to the trauma is more important than processing the contents of the trauma itself. Jessica Benjamin, Stephen Mitchell, Louis Aaron, James Poshak and Philip Bromberg all claim that connection and relationship are in the center, and not desire. This group is thus called the “Center Group”: those who are between the psychology of me and that of the interpersonal. Those who belong to the introspective approach identify projection and empathy as very important in the therapeutic relationship. Both the therapist and the patient are influenced by one another and the whole question of influence is most significant in this approach.
