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If a trauma strikes the soul, or the body, unprepared … in the absence of a solid counter-cathexis, [it] produces a kind of explosion, a destruction of psychic associations between the systems and psychic contents, which may reach down to the deepest elements of perceptions…. The unprotected child is ready to be blown up, so to speak.
—Sándor Ferenczi, Clinical Diary, pp. 69-70
Frequently, trauma studies are categorized depending upon the external source of trauma. For examples, there are specialists in child sexual abuse, incest victims, holocaust victims, victims of war, victims of natural disasters (earthquakes and hurricanes), victims of accidents (e.g., airline disasters), and so forth. Correspondingly, it is generally assumed that these kinds of trauma require specialized knowledge and expertise, as the cork of a wine bottle requires a corkscrew, the cap of a beer bottle requires a bottle opener, and a can requires a can opener. The wrong opener simply will not work.
But as the opening quotation from Ferenczi suggests, I will be concerned here with what makes a child (or an adult) “ready to be blown up” by external events (whatever they may be), and with the effects of experiencing (and repeating) such explosive fragmentation. Most particularly, I will be addressing childhood trauma as these appear in adult treatment. Inevitably, shame dynamics come into play. First, there are feelings of total helplessness associated with the childhood abuse. These are mortifying. Then there are the superego criticisms of such a ready-to-be-blown-up state: to feel this way is to be defective by definition. Moreover, there is the proneness to reliving the trauma as part of the analytic situation, and therefore to exposing oneself to the humiliating scrutiny of the analyst. Finally, and related to the potentially traumatic effect of the analytic situation, there is the inherently shameful pattern of turning for help to the very people from whom one expects injury. Such patterns co