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TRAUMATIC TRANSFERENCE
Patients who suffer from a traumatic syndrome form a characteristic type of transference in the therapy relationship. Their emotional responses to any person in a position of authority have been deformed by the experience of terror. For this reason, traumatic transference reactions have an intense, life-or-death quality unparalleled in ordinary therapeutic experience. In Kernberg’s words, “It is as if the patient’s life depends on keeping the therapist under control
Some of the most astute observations on the vicissitudes of traumatic transference appear in the classic accounts of the treatment of borderline personality disorder, written when the traumatic origin of the disorder was not yet known. In these accounts, a destructive force appears to intrude repeatedly into the relationship between therapist and patient. This force, which was traditionally attributed to the patient’s innate aggression, can now be recognized as the violence of the perpetrator
The psychiatrist Eric Lister remarks that the transference in traumatized patients does not reflect a simple dyadic relationship, but rather a triad.He says: The terror is as though the patient and therapist convene in the presence of yet another person
The third image is the victimizer,who..demanded silence and whose command is now being broken
Trauma and Recovery
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