Trauma As A Borderline Situation

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

In order to talk about trauma, let's start from afar - with the question of how the psyche is formed. At the beginning of his career as a human being, the child does not have a psyche at all, which is replaced by affects and bodily discomfort as the main motive. This stage of development can be called schizoid, because at this stage there is no relationship with an object that simply does not exist. The child's mental space is flooded with undifferentiated sensations, which the caregiver gives shape to and thus orders chaotic excitement. This state must be very frightening and that is why the main task of this period is to acquire a sense of security. Here, it is not the relationship with anything that matters, but the experience of tranquility and it, I remind you, is still objectless.

The object is acquired at the next stage of development, or personal organization, but the relationship with it is characterized by blurred boundaries between the subject and the object and rigid boundaries within the mental space of the subject. Blurred boundaries denote a state of extreme dependence, when the emotional state of one participant in the interaction is inevitably determined by the state of the other. As if another reaction, besides the reaction, is impossible and the organ of control over the mental state is outside. In order to resist this permeability of outer boundaries, the psyche forms a special defense called splitting. Its essence lies in the fact that if I cannot regulate the change in my state under external influence, then inside I will learn to turn off that part of the psyche that has turned out to be changed.

In other words, if in a relationship with an object I feel weak and helpless and cannot do anything at the border of contact, then I can put this impossible border inward and stop feeling weak and helpless. Metaphorically speaking, take a headache pill instead of treating the underlying cold. Remaining defenseless in the face of an external aggressor, the subject learns to be extremely aggressive towards himself. Or rather, to some mental state. Borderline intrapersonal splitting is thus the result of prior and unprocessed interpersonal fusion. A mechanism that will be used in adulthood is already traced here - one can not experience separation trauma, but cope with it thanks to the action of primitive defense mechanisms.

The next stage of development implies the presence of a symbolic layer between the subject and the object, which localizes relations in an intermediate space, on the border, and not inside the psyche. It allows you to build relationships with an integral object, and not with its separate affective part, and therefore assumes the presence of an integral, not divided into parts of the subject. It allows you to maintain autonomy and manipulate symbols, and not objects, as it was in the previous stage. This is one of the main acquisitions of the neurotic level - I am always more than his affect. The environment ceases to act directly on the neurotic; it is mediated by meanings and meanings that can be controlled. The symbolic layer is the buffer zone that can change and deform in every possible way without threatening the integrity of the object. “Behind my back you can talk about me and you can even beat me” - refers to the neurotic level on which most living beings live. Of course, neurotic organization presupposes the possibility of reversible borderline and even schizoid reactions.

How is the course of mental life usually regulated? The anxiety experienced by the subject can be processed either through behavioral change, when mental arousal is more supported by expanding the zone of awareness, or with the help of psychic defenses, which narrow the zone of awareness and thereby suppress the anxiety. At the neurotic level of development, mental defenses are realized through the semantic, that is, symbolic sphere. For example, we supplant what turns out to be unacceptable or explain what has no explanation. If the higher psychic defenses of the neurotic register do not cope, then defenses of a coarser order come to their aid, which deal with nonsymbolized affect. These primitive defenses are the last line of defense before the personality plunges into the state of primitive affective chaos from which it emerged.

The traumatic event, therefore, turns out to be that terrible catastrophe that confronts the personality with the possibility of deep regression, up to a state of mental disorganization. Trauma pierces the personality organization through and through, this is an event of the highest intensity, which cannot be processed by the forces of neurotic defenses, which overcomes the resources of symbolization. Trauma in the psychic dimension is represented by a non-symbolized affect that can only be stopped with the help of borderline reactions. Otherwise, regression can reach the schizoid level, at which the only active "defense mechanism" is the rejection of life, that is, mental death. To prevent this from happening, the traumatic affect must be isolated from the self by splitting.

As a result, a paradoxical situation arises - on the one hand, traumatic dissociation stops the destruction of the psyche, on the other, it forms an unconscious affective state that distorts the conscious “outwardly normal” part of the personality, that is, stops this destruction at the previous level of organization. The personality survives, but pays too high a price for it. An unfinished traumatic situation tends to be reworked, but this goal cannot be achieved due to limited personal resources. Therefore, traumatic repetition does not heal the trauma, but rather heightens feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. This, in turn, increases the deformation of an outwardly normal personality, which learns to control affect by limiting its vitality, and not by expanding the possibilities for its manifestations.

The traumatic person tries to recycle the trauma not by contacting with the dissociated affect, for which he lacks the strength, but by acting out the traumatic situation again and again. If earlier the catastrophe in establishing boundaries was carried inward, now the traumatic affect is carried out. This strategy is a borderline solution, since in this case the traumatic person is simultaneously merged with his affect and alienated from it. He seems to assert that my affect is my I, my ultimate psychic reality, behind which there is nothing else - neither the future nor the past. And at the same time, he cannot contact him from within his I, since this will lead to an increase in affect and will threaten retraumatization. This provides the “ideal” form of control - I don’t touch, but I don’t let go either. We remember that borderline conditions are both a desire for communication and an attack on it. A bad internal object threatens to destroy a good one, so trauma therapy consists in the need to enter a depressive position, that is, to get the opportunity to integrate them.

A neurotic might say that my affect is something that sometimes happens in certain circumstances, but it is not my whole self. My affects are determined by my phantasms, not objects. The neurotic creates the bond while the borderline client is enslaved by it. In the borderline reaction between the subject and the object, the border disappears and therefore the affect has no addressee - formally heading to the object, it acts on the territory of its own psyche. Affect is not evacuated beyond its limits, into the symbolic space between, in which exchange can take place, but, like a raging bull in a cramped room, destroys its internal structures. The affect must be suppressed, since there is no other way to process it. Therefore, splitting creates boundaries within the psyche that are absent between the two psyches.

Carrying out differential diagnostics between crisis and trauma, it can be concluded that the first state is neurotic, and the second is a borderline response to a sharp change in life situations. These two states, in different parameters, turn out to be directly opposite to each other. Thus, a crisis has an internal logic of development, which leads to its spontaneous resolution, while trauma stops mental development and cannot be healed at the expense of its own resources. A crisis involves a compromise between the need for stability and the need for development; trauma invests in stability by limiting vitality. Changes in personality during a crisis are gradual and accompany changes in the system of relationships; with trauma, a sharp distortion of the personality profile is observed, which does not improve external adaptation, but reflects the process of internal dissociation. A crisis is a semantic disaster, while trauma moves past the symbolic dimension and gets stuck in the body in the form of an incomplete fight-flight response.

Accordingly, work with trauma as with a borderline situation is carried out with the help of its “neurotization”, that is, by transferring violations from a more archaic, to a more mature register. A traumatic person can hardly be in the middle zone of the window of tolerance, since an increase in mental arousal threatens its avalanche-like increase. The traumatic affect can be channeled in relationships, since emotions are, first of all, a contact phenomenon. Thus, one of the tricks in working with traumatic experiences is to create a recipient for their manifestations, since this effort leads to the emergence of a boundary between the subject and the object. Affect is packaged into a symbolic function that allows you to attach meaning to what is happening.

In other words, here we come to the existential question of what a person is and what does he gather around, what is his systematizing and organizing principle? In the case of trauma, as a borderline situation, a person seems to disappear from the conflict field that arises at the border of contact and loses the ability to withstand dialectical tension. His main need remains the desire for security and, thus, he ceases to interact with the world, plunging into an autistic cocoon. The traumatic person denies his need and, thus, autonomy. Consequently, traumatic discourse preserves the conditional contour of a person, erasing his inner content.

The neurotic organization, on the other hand, as a benchmark against which we can look up in the course of trauma therapy, is built around desire, as a symbolic expression of need. The neurotic destroys the barriers, while the traumatic ensures their inviolability. It can be said that the neurotic lives by desires, while the traumatic man lives by needs. A traumatic person is obsessed with an affect that he cannot evacuate, since for this it is necessary to address it to a specific person in a certain situation, and not to his projection, with which it is impossible to disidentify.

Trauma therapy, therefore, aims at the narcissistic reinvestment of the subject through the discovery of his lack and movement towards the Other. The Oedipal situation that heals the trauma leads to the Other being the symbolic third who pulls the subject out of merging with his affect. That is why trauma turns out to be a situation that does not resolve on its own, since it formats the register of personal organization. Trauma, leading to regression and possible disintegration of the psyche, needs relationships, since they, in turn, are the beginning of any psychic reality.