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The Confusional Link
Working with patients who have been traumatized as infants and young children can be
confusing for the therapist who is accustomed to working in the symbolic order. In order to cope
with traumatic, psychic overwhelm, they have retreated from object relations and continue to
relate to others concretely as things or functions. Their relations are body relations, consisting of
unconscious symbiotic union with others. Since often trauma survivors become adept in the
world, becoming well educated and finding professional jobs, their concreteness and difficulty
processing emotion may go unnoticed. They display a pseudo-maturity and pseudo-object
relations.
For therapists and analysts working with them, their somatic relational process can be confusing
and disorienting.
Participants will:
1 Learn to differentiate a confusional object from a transitional object.
2 Recognize a somatic defense as found in ‘language as action’.
3 Appreciate the value of pathological mimicry.