Below is an interview about how twitter helped me heal and transform when I was struggling with a grave and serous long-term chronic illness. I often refer to that time of my life as a dark night of the soul. See: Monica’s story: the aftermath of polypsychopharmacology and Dark Night of the Soul posts During the period of time I'm discussing... Continue Reading →
By Leah Harris Is it melancholy to think that a world that Robin Williams can’t live in must be broken? To tie this sad event to the overarching misery of our times? – Russell Brand, comedian/actor
I will be using the word trauma to mean any experience that causes the child unbearable psychic pain or anxiety. For an experience to be “unbearable” means that it overwhelms the usual defensive measures which Freud described as a “protective shield against stimuli.” Trauma of this magnitude varies from the acute, shattering experiences of child abuse so prominent in the literature today to the more “cumulative traumas” of unmet dependency-needs that mount up to devastating effect in some children’s development, including the more acute deprivations of infancy described by Winnicott as “primitive agonies,” the experience of which is “unthinkable.” The distinguishing feature of such trauma is what Heinz Kohut called “disintegration anxiety,” an unnameable dread associated with the threatened dissolution of a coherent self.” …
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