Echoes of Trauma Meaning and Identity in Psychoanalysis

by Charles, Marilyn

• ISBN13: 9781433841996
• ISBN10: 1433841991
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781433842009
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-05-27
• Publisher: American Psychological Association
• More Book Details

Summary

“Essential reading for psychotherapists seeking to develop increased competency in the care of individuals who struggle with trauma or seeking a deeper experience in their therapeutic work. The book will also be helpful for psychotherapists interested in psychoanalytic or psychodynamic work. It will also be of interest to current therapists, as well as students in psychiatry and psychology, and other students pursuing careers in mental health...includes an extensive reference section, as well as a helpful index.” --Doody's Reviews

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.

Author Biography

Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP, is a psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Austen Riggs Center, Chair of the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, and Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council. Affiliations include Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, Universidad de Monterrey, and Harvard Medical School. Books include Patterns; Constructing Realities; Learning from Experience; Working with Trauma; Psychoanalysis and Literature; Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis;Fragments of Trauma and the Social Production of Suffering (with Michael O’Loughlin); Women and Psychosis and Women and the Psychosocial Construction of Madness (with Marie Brown); and The Importance of Play in Early Childhood Education (with Jill Bellinson).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Companions on a Journey
Part I. The Intra- and Interpersonal Context in Which Identity Develops
Chapter 1. Bion’s Grid: Tracking Relational Versus Cognitive Development
Chapter 2. Affective Development
Chapter 3. Symbolization
Chapter 4. Identity Development
Part II. Interpreting Transference and Countertransference
Chapter 5. Transference and Countertransference
Chapter 6. Interpretation
Part III. Understanding Specific Symptoms
Chapter 7. Somatization
Chapter 8. Eating Disorders
Chapter 9. Borderline Versus Narcissistic Positions
Chapter 10. Narcissism
Chapter 11. Psychosis
Part IV. Applications
Chapter 12. The Oblique Angle: Psychoanalysis and the View From the Side
Chapter 13. Dreams and Field Theory
Chapter 14. Trauma, Resilience, and Psychic Time
Epilogue: Instruments in Need of Fine Tuning
References