The Nature of Trauma and Dissociation

A relational systems understanding of trauma and its treatments

In this commentary, Dr Doris Brothers describes trauma as an unbearable experience of existential uncertainty. She discusses how trauma disrupts our relational system and why she has thus come to understand its impact through a relational systems approach. Dr Brothers suggests that the relational problems people bring to therapy can be understood as rigid mental states, such as a tendency to divide the world into dichotomous categories, which have arisen as a defensive response to traumatic memory in order to provide some kind of emotional certainty. She proposes that rigid defenses become the driving mechanism of such personal relationships and thus the therapy relationship itself. Doris Brothers discusses her own traumatic experiences and their impact on her therapeutic stance, especially when a mutual traumatic attachment pattern is emerging in an enactment between therapist and patient. The somatic and embodied aspects of such moments are discussed.