Trauma, Guilt and Reparation

The Path from Impasse to Development

Heinz Weiss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367185411
• eBook ISBN: 9780429589591
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Trauma, Guilt and Reparation identifies the emotional barriers faced by people who have experienced severe trauma, as well as the emergence of reparative processes which pave the way from impasse to development.

The book explores the issue of trauma with particular reference to issues of reparation and guilt. Referencing the original work of Klein and others, it examines how feelings of persistent guilt work to foil attempts at reparation, locking trauma deep within the psyche. It provides a theoretical understanding of the interplay between feelings of neediness with those of fear, wrath, shame and guilt, and offers a route for patients to experience the mourning and forgiveness necessary to come to terms with their own trauma. The book includes a Foreword by John Steiner.

Illustrated by clinical examples throughout, it is written by an author whose empathy and experience make him an expert in the field. The book will be of great interest to psychotherapists, social workers and any professional working with traumatized individuals.

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface and acknowledgements
• 1. Trauma, guilt and reparation: A psychoanalytic paradigm
• 2. Impediments to reparation: Resentment, shame and wrath – the significance of the gaze
• 3. Repetition compulsion and the primitive super-ego: Attempts at reparation in borderline patients
• 4. The ‘Tower’: Submission and illusory security in a traumatic defence organisation
• 5. Trauma, reparation and the limits of reparation
• 6. Traumatic remembering and ecliptic forgetting: On the riddle of time in Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days
• 7. Reparation and gratitude
• Bibliography
• Index