On Coming Into Possession of Oneself: Witnessing and the Formulation of Experience

In this paper I use clinical theory and illustration to explore details of the formulation of experience, which depends upon the metamorphosis of experience from not-me to feels-like-me. I take the position that the movement from not-me to feels-like-me, with the accompanying possibilities for formulating new meaning that open at such moments, happens when we not only know or feel something, but also, and simultaneously, sense ourselves in the midst of this process-that is, when we know and feel that it is we who are doing the knowing and feeling. When these two events co-occur, which depends upon the process of witnessing and the breach of dissociation, we come into possession of ourselves. Witnessing of one person by another is a process of recognition, but it is also a kind of affirmation performed by "someone who is trusted and justifies the trust and meets the dependence" (Winnicott 1971, p. 60).

Implementing a Trauma-Informed Model of Care in a Community Acute Mental Health Team

In this paper, we demonstrate the value of implementing a Trauma-Informed Model of Care in a Community Acute Mental Health Team by providing brief intensive treatment (comprising risk interventions, brief counselling, collaborative formulation and pharmacological treatment). The team utilised the Conversational Model (CM), a psychotherapeutic approach for complex trauma. Key features of the CM are described in this paper using a clinical case study. The addition of the Conversational Model approach to practice has enabled better understandings of consumers' capacities and ways to then engage, converse, and intervene. The implementation of this intervention has led to a greater sense of self-efficacy amongst clinicians, who can now articulate a clear counselling model of care.

'The child's past in the adult's present': The trauma of the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944)

This study deals with the individual and collective memory of Leningrad Siege survivors who experienced mass and prolonged wartime trauma during childhood (1941-44). While much has been published about the Siege, there has to date been no investigation by psychologists into the effects of extreme deprivation on Siege victims apart from one pilot study (Gulina et al., 2005). This study is still underway. Interviews with 80 participants (68 female and 12 male) are analysed and discussed here. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and content analysis are utilized. Unpublished archival writings by children caught in the Siege have been analysed. The principal method of interpretation is based on a psychoanalytic understanding of child development, mourning and the metabolizing of traumatic experience. The subjective meaning of the Siege experience to individual children is considered.

Multimodal psychoanalytically informed aid work with children traumatized by the Chechen war

As demonstrated in three cases, this paper illustrates how psychoanalytically informed multimodal care was an essential element of effective medical treatment of children traumatized by the Chechen war. Multimodal psychoanalytically informed aid work involves holding a variety of psychoanalytic viewpoints, including but not restricted to those represented by the Freudian, Interpersonal, and Relational orientations; its purpose is to allow for greater clarity in conceptualizing the traumatized child's response to war in order to provide the necessary care during the therapeutic process. Among the issues addressed are how traumatic memory can initially be expressed nonverbally, and therefore the use of embodied life-metaphors and witnessing are central to the survivors' ability to remember and symbolize. In addition, the significance of cultural awareness and sensitivity are explored as key components to the children's care. In the first case, the author illustrates how a traumatic life-metaphor can be resolved at an embodied, rather than an exclusively verbal, level. In the second case, cultural tradition and relativism have a significant impact on addressing medical and quality of life issues for the child. The third case illustrates how the analyst functions as recognizing witness to a parent's trauma; the "being with" of the relationship becomes the agent of the parent's change.