Unrepresented and yet-to-be-suffered trauma and neglect announce themselves in the language of symptoms, absence and emergent enactments in the treatment field. This course will address the challenges when working with patients whose trauma does not avail itself to symbolization and mentalization. These patients often suffer disturbances in the area of self- other definition, continuity and regulation of self. In this course we will outline how the analyst can unobtrusively create the safe and robust space within which the fullness of the patient’s internal world and trauma can be realized and companioned such that the patient can be known in the register of illusion, fragmentation and non- relatedness that are the signature of the residue of
trauma and neglect. The emphasis is on companioning and being-with the patient In their particular idiom and register rather than seeking to bring the patient into the analyst’s reality and understanding. This unique therapeutic relationship offers the space for the instantiation of time such that trauma can be located in memory and the past. This involves the un-telling and un-doing of prior “translations”, personality structures and relational patterns such that being and time can be
re-assembled and re-integrated.