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Sverre Varvin has had the unique opportunity to study a small group of severely traumatised people during psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and has approached this task with great courage and with incredible energy.
While Varvin maintains that psychoanalysis offers the most comprehensive theory of interaction between development, the formation of personality, the relation between the body and the mind and the interaction of the individual with the environment, he is still of the opinion that a fruitful theoretical interaction with neighbouring disciplines is necessary (attachment theory, neuroscience, cognitive science, anthropology, semiotics). Although he thus seems, in the strict sense, to keep psychoanalytic theory apart from other disciplines, he confronts the challenges of this complex field and makes an effort to integrate it. In the first part of the book, Varvin virtually builds up the concepts he wants to work with, discusses them and defines them. He then combines these concepts with classical psychoanalytic theory and fits them together into a new frame of reference. The first part of his book forms a convincing beginning of a truly modern psychoanalytic theory - especially concerning the theory of trauma.
Varvin states that trauma is a complex event occurring beyond normal horizons. It is defined retrospectively, and while it has had an effect on development, it is now being considered as a developmental disturbance in itself. He underlines the seemingly ubiquitous strong feelings of shame and somatic reactions to severe trauma. It seems that the traumatised have lost their ability to draw on experience and to look forward. The traumatized person always reacts in the manner of a sort of frozen mobility, as if he were still in the traumatic state.
Furthermore, Varvin states that the traumatic bodily and affective experiences disturb th