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Tavistock Clinic Book Series

Understanding trauma: a psychoanalytical approach

Major disasters draw attention forcibly to their effects on the survivors. Less often recognised are the long-term after-effects of the huge number and variety of more private events, either accidental or deliberately inflicted, on an individual’s subsequent emotional and working life. This book is about what follows the breakdown in functioning, either short or longer-term, provoked by a traumatic event.

What is distinctive about this book is that its authors offer a psychoanalytical understanding of the meaning of the trauma for an individual, illuminating theory with detailed clinical illustration and case histories. They show the process of treatment as their patients restore meaning to their lives, moving towards a new integration in which the event becomes a part of the whole, no longer dominating either waking or sleeping life. A range of therapeutic procedures is described, including a short series of individual consultations, groups and full analysis.

A challenging and innovative work, rooted in psychoanalysis, this collection thoughtfully describes in detail the work for the Unit for the Study of Trauma and its Aftermath in the Adult Department of the Tavistock Clinic.

Edited by Caroline Garland

Table of Contents

Part one: Introduction

Introduction: Why Psychoanalysis?

  1. Thinking about trauma
    Caroline Garland
  2. Human error
    David Bell

Part Two : Assessment and Consultation

  1. The psychodynamic assessment of post-traumatic stress
    David Taylor
  2. Preliminary interventions: the four session therapeutic consultation
    Linda Young

Part Three: Treatment in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

  1. Trauma and grievance
    Linda Young and Elizabeth Gibb
  2. Mental work in a trauma patient
    Graham Ingham
  3. Issues in treatment: a case of rape
    Caroline Garland
  4. Dreaming after a traumatic bereavement: mourning or avoidance?
     Elizabeth Gibb
  5. Identificatory processes in trauma
    Shankarnarayan Srinath
  6. Developmental injury: its effects on the inner world
    Nick Temple
  7. External injury and the internal world
    David Bell

Part Five Groups

  1. The traumatized group
    Caroline Garland

Check our Library catalogue for earlier staff publications. Tip- If you are looking for items by a particular author, enter the author's name in the search box e.g. Rachel Davenhill and then click on ‘Author’

Last Updated: 28/03/2006