Echoes of Trauma: Meaning and Identity in Psychoanalysis

Intricately weaves psychoanalytic and developmental theory to explain how we become who we are, and how we might grow beyond the places we get stuck.

In recent decades psychological research and practice has focused heavily on cognitive domains, with far less attention paid to the nonverbal systems through which people register essential meanings. This has led many clinicians to seek disembodied and often mechanistic solutions to clients’ problems. But these approaches fail to recognize hidden sources of trauma, which can be difficult to access through conscious reflection. As the source of a trauma recedes further into the past and remains unexplored and unmourned, the effect can become a lingering adversity that masquerades as destiny—and this worldview can even be passed along through subsequent generations.

In this volume, Marilyn Charles argues for a more embodied, less mechanistic view of human development. To understand a client’s problem at a particular moment in time, we must understand the history that has given rise to it, some of which the client may be able to tell us directly, but some that we must intuit from signs and symptoms because not all history can be recalled consciously. After drawing on psychoanalytic and developmental theory to ground her model, Charles uses clinical vignettes and comparisons with her own life to illustrate how we might facilitate our clients’ development.

Development is never final. It is an ongoing, lifelong process that can get off-track. Using the theory and techniques in this book, therapists can help clients find and integrate the missing pieces of their life story.