Download pdf - RFSU

transitional phenomenon and create a fear of developing
autonomous means of regulating tension and
discomfort. The child’s ability to be alone, even if the
mother is present, can thereby be undermined. A further
consequence may be that the child must assure himself
of the mother’s presence in order to be able to cope with
different feeling-states, regardless of their internal or external
origins.
Given such circumstances it may be difficult for the
child to develop an inner representation of a caring maternal
figure. A figure that encompasses the ability to cope
with both psychological pain overwhelming emotional
stimulation. If a child is not able to identify with and
internalise such a figure it becomes incapable of developing
a self-soothing function and limits the ability deal
with internal and external pressures. As a result, regulative
functions tend to be sought in the outside world. Drugs,
food, sex, and exposing oneself to physical danger or pain
can be used as a ways of regulating inner feeling-states
and diverting conscious awareness of inner pain. The
problem is, however, that the use of such behaviour as
regulative functions acts primarily in physiological rather
than psychological terms. They are somatic attempts to
compensate for something that is missing psychologically.
As such they can only lend temporary relief.
When such a void in early relationships exists, the
ability to recognise, understand and deal with inner experiences
may be seriously impaired. Desires, needs, and
impulses become expressed in actions, without thinking.
Consequently, the ability to use one’s mind in order to
determine whether this is good or bad is eliminated.
Repeating early trauma
The experience of being abused as a child, whether
sexually, physically or psychologically, is impossible to
understand or even think about without help. Instead of
being felt and integrated psychologically, such experiences
become deposited in a kind of chaotic isolation. They exist
as inner disasters without meaning. The individual will
continuously return to the unintegrated raw experience
of these disasters by expressing it in actions.
The trauma becomes constantly reformed and re-expressed
in new ways be in an effort to win control over
the experience and thereby eliminate the feelings of inner
chaos. From the experience of being a dependent and
passive victim an illusion of power and control over the
trauma is born. In this way passive is turned to active, and
the individual becomes the director of his own drama.
By directing the drama, it becomes possible to find
revenge and triumph. The victim now becomes perpetrator,
and can empty his emotional pain into another victim.
Here it is important to understand that this dynamic involves
an attempt to find a solution to inner problems by
ridding the individual of unbearable feelings. However,
since it does not constitute an actual solution involving
psychological growth that can heal a damaged inner world,
the act must be repeated.
The men and women taking part in the project
described a wide variety of traumatic experiences that
occurred early in life, such as various form of separation,
abandonment, neglect, psychological, physical or sexual
abuse.
A common experience was a feeling of being left to
the whims of one parent. Fathers were often described as
absent, either physically or emotionally through their passivity.
Growing up with two parents (or other adults) who
have a reasonably good relationship to each other, helps
to engender an inner model in which a good relationship
22