You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This book provides a self-psychology perspective for modifying both the theory and treatment of psychic trauma. Ulman and Brothers propose that actual traumatic events shatter unconscious archaic fantasies central to the organization of self-experience. The unconscious meaning of the traumatic event stems from this shattering process coupled with the victim's faulty attempts to restore these fantasies.
According to Ulman and Brothers, neither reality nor fantasy causes trauma; rather, the unconscious meaning of real occurrences causes trauma by shattering central organizing fantasies of self in relation to mirroring or idealized selfobjects. They view the understanding, interpreting, and working-through of the unconscious meaning of trauma as a major purpose of psychoanalytic therapy. Their central argument is that the “physical reality” or unconscious meaning of trauma as symptomatically expressed in the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) resides in the shattering and faulty restoration of central organizing fantasies.
Examples of central organizing fantasies include unconscious fantasies of the self as grandiose, or of the idealized selfobject as omnipotent. Central organizing fantasies are unconscious narcissistic fantasies that fail to undergo sufficient developmental transformation and therefore remain in their original archaic form. The authors view central organizing fantasies as unconscious meaning structures that begin to take form early in-life and remain active throughout life. These unconscious narcissistic fantasies involve illusions (not delusions) of personally unique attributes and special