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Vol. 42 No. 1 (2022)
Revista Portuguesa de Psicanálise

Theory and Epistemology

Trauma Cumulativo: Quando a estória sobrevive entre a repetição relacional do trauma e o corpo

https://doi.org/10.51356/rpp.421a4

Published 2022-08-06

Paulo Ferrajão
Universidade Europeia

António Esteves


Mairi Stumpf


Abstract

Cumulative Trauma: When the Story Survives Between the Relational Repetition of Trauma and the Body

In the trauma literature, the dominant conceptualizations describe post-traumatic disorder as a memory disorder. In the context of extensive extra-clinical research and clinical practice, we present a model of trauma-related disorder as an identity disorder, specifically a structural dissociation of the personality. The tertiary structural dissociation is described as associated with early cumulative trauma occurring in a relational context. We present the expression of the psychic narrative in tertiary structural dissociation in two modalities: 1) enactment of dissociated related systems in which the division of multiple representations of the self and objects establish the oscillation between multiple relational systems: victim, persecutor and savior; 2) worries or somatic symptoms with a predominance of a concrete thought that causes the body to be the container of non-elaborated and de-symbolized affects expressed as embodied memories. It is proposed that the relational repetition of trauma in the drama triangle and/or the concerns or somatic symptoms should be analyzed in the transference-countertransference relationship of these patients as a procedure for making explicit the implicit relational systems in the here-and-now. This process helps in the structuring and progressive integration of the dissociated parts of the self that promote the structural change of the psyche.

Keywords

Cumulative trauma, Identity, Structural dissociation of the personality, Trauma triangle, Embodied memories

PDF (Português)

Author Biography

Paulo Ferrajão

Psicólogo Clínico, Professor Auxiliar. Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde e do Desporto, Universidade Europeia.

António Esteves

Psicólogo.

Mairi Stumpf

Psicóloga e Psicoterapeuta.

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