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Fromm orients the reader in his Introduction that his “focus will be on stories of trauma: the conditions that lead to it, the forms it takes, the way it affects a person's lives and the lives of others, and how that fallout might be addressed” (p. xix). “Following Erikson, this book is not a theoretical work on trauma, even less a comprehensive survey of the field. Rather, it is a way of looking at the stories I have come across …” (p. xxv). Many of Fromm's stories come from his experiences at the Austen Riggs Center, especially participating in Group Relations Conferences, “Intensive group experiences, designed to study leadership and authority in the unfolding dynamic of the conference itself” (p. 55), that were conducted with groups dealing with unmetabolized trauma.
An ethos of insightful caring pervades this book, consistent with the approaches of Erikson and Winnicott who are guiding spirits for Fromm. This ethos is captured by certain comments and quotations that Fromm finds crucial enough to include more than once. Thus, troubled systems must be addressed with a holding environment or maternal authority that takes a “How are they right?” stance (pp. xxxvi, 66). From Winnicott's work Fromm recognizes as important factors leading to fear of breakdown both that breakdown already happened, but at an early developmental level before the child had a coherent self that could process it (pp. 5, 98, 134) and that nothing happened at a crucial developmental moment when something—mutuality with the caretaking object—might have happened (pp. 27, 205). And he quotes Adam Phillips that “People are only ever as mad as the other person is deaf” (pp. 81, 142; original in Phillips, 1996).
Fromm applies his way of looking to a diversity of stories, beginning with a section on Trauma in Families in which he explores the lives of Christopher McCandless, best known from Krakauer's Into the Wild (1996), and Erik Erikson himself. In his next section, Trauma in Organizations, Fromm e