The Imprint of Trauma

A Summary on part 4 of “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel Van Der Kolk

I find it interesting to know that what was once true back then isn’t necessarily true today, like the “Talking Cure” for example. Secondly, I find it surprising the way victims such as veterans who had PTSD were treated too. I never actually realized that there were so many people who do not understand mental illness and view the people who suffer horribly, especially PTSD. Granted there were at least some people who were dedicated to relieving the suffering of other human beings like Pierre Janet, rather than promoting hate. Pierre cared about people’s minds and his goal was to find the right treatment for his patients while other doctors just wrote about their symptoms. Freud and Breur thought they had it figured out when they founded the “Talking Cure” in 1983. Although talking about it proved to be somewhat successful, it still wasn’t enough according to research later on because people kept reliving their trauma, having flashbacks, and dissociating.

They once thought that if their patients were able to remember, explain, and express their traumas verbally, that they would begin to successfully heal from their trauma. Same with exposure therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, but those were also unsuccessful. Both Freud and Breur said that by verbally remembering, “It brings an end to the operative force, which was not abreacted in the first instance by allowing its strangulated affect to find a way out through speech; and it subjects it to associative correction by…