Postscript

In the second part of the paper by van der Kolk and Fisler, which is not reproduced here, the authors studied 36 women and 10 men who met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD in order to record whether, and how, memories of traumatic experiences are retrieved differently from memories of significant but non-traumatic experiences. Thirty-six of the individuals had their most significant traumatic experience in childhood, the remainder as adults, and 75% of the subjects with childhood trauma had external confirmation of the traumatic experience.

All subjects, regardless of age at which the trauma occurred, reported that their initial memory was not in the form of a narrative, but was instead a somatosensory or emotional flashback experience. The study supported the frequently observed difference in the very nature of traumatic vs. normal memory. The essence of traumatic memory is that initially it is not symbolized, but stored as fragmented sensory input related to the traumatic event. Over time, most trauma victims construct a narrative for these sensory imprints. Like all narrative memories, the verbal accounts for what has happened are subject to distortion. However, a large body of research has shown that memories of emotionally highly significant events are subject to less distortion than are memories of everyday experience. There were interesting trends noted between the adult onset trauma group and the childhood onset group as well, trends that are very consistent with clinical experience. The childhood trauma group had significantly more pathological self-soothing behaviors than the adult group, including self-mutilation and bingeing. This supports the notion, which has a growing empirical basis, that childhood trauma gives rise to more pervasive biological dysregulation.

Van der Kolk and Fisler conclude their paper with a reference to their brain imaging study that showed that traumatic memories ‘happen’ principally in the emotional areas of the right hemisphere, a