Assignment: Psychic Trauma

Assignment: Psychic Trauma

NOW FOR AN ORIGINAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT:Assignment: Psychic Trauma

Psychic trauma is a process initiated by an event that confronts an individual with an acute, overwhelming threat (Freud, 1917/1963). When the event occurs, the inner agency of the mind loses its ability to control the disorganizing effects of the experience, and disequilibrium occurs. The trauma tears up the individual’s psychological anchors, which are fixed in a secure sense of what has been in the past and what should be in the present (Erikson, 1968). When a traumatic event occurs that represents noth- ing like the person’s experience of past events, and the individual’s mind is unable to effectively answer basic questions of how and why it occurred and what it means, a crisis ensues. The traumatic wake of a crisis event typically includes immediate and vivid reexperi- encing, hyperarousal, and avoidance reactions, which are all common to PTSD. The event propels the indi- vidual into a traumatic state that lasts as long as the mind needs to reorganize, classify, and make sense of the traumatic event. Then, and only then, does psy- chic equilibrium return (Furst, 1978).

The typical kinds of responses that occur imme- diately after the crisis may give rise to what are called peritraumatic (around, or like, trauma) symptoms. These are common responses as the mind attempts to reorganize itself and cope with a horrific event. For many people, these responses will slowly disappear af- ter a few days. Most people are amazingly resilient in the aftermath of a traumatic crisis and quickly return to mental and physical homeostasis, but if the symp- toms continue for a minimum of 2 days and a max- imum of 4 weeks and occur within 1 month of the traumatic event, then those time frames will meet the criteria of acute stress disorder (ASD) (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Acute stress disorder diagnostic criteria are similar to the criteria for PTSD, which you will soon meet, except that the diagnosis can only be given in the first month after a traumatic event. ASD is somewhat different than PTSD be- cause dissociative symptoms such as memory loss, a sense of detachment from the world, belief that things and people are unreal, a blurred sense of iden- tity, and a general disconnect from reality are present (International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, 2015). As we will see, it is important to tackle ASD symptoms immediately and head on, be- cause they tend to be valid predictors for “catching” PTSD. Percentage rates for ASD vary a great deal de- pending on trauma type from vehicle accidents that range in the teens, to victims of robbery in the twen- ties, and to rape which skyrockets to the nineties (Gibson, 2015).