Paradox and the Repetitive Search for the Real: Reply to Ghent, Lachmann, and Russell

I would like to thank Drs. Ghent, Lachmann, and Russell for presenting their unique perspectives in their discussions of my paper. Russell presents a lucid and provocative exploration of trauma and the repetition compulsion. My considerations of the symptomatic aftermath of trauma and the repetition compulsion will lead into a broad-based examination of the relevant treatment issues discussed by Ghent and Lachmann.

I agree with Russell's emphasis on the solitariness of trauma. If trauma can be known only “after the fact” as Russell proposes, through its posttraumatic communications, it suggests that the aloneness of not being able to communicate one's experience immediately may be intrinsic to trauma. Russell's near accident into a tree occurred when he was alone. Only 20 minutes later, in the presence of a friend, did Russell display his symptomatology of “feeling faint, dizzy, and sweaty.” My son was more fortunate in that, at the time of the “trauma” of his knee injury, there was someone he could turn to for solace and recognition of what had happened to him; perhaps more significantly, someone else who could bear witness to the “reality” of his experience. As Russell suggests, one may need this sense of connectedness in order to have the freedom to feel.

When no one is there to offer comfort, one may turn inward and be less inclined to acknowledge that what happened “out there” actually happened. One immediately “adapts” to the absence of another by stoically learning how to go it alone and rely on one's own resources, a self-reliance that all too often seems to be one of the residual casualties of growing up.