Ghislaine Boulanger is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and a member of the Relational faculty at New York University´s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Her interest in adult onset trauma began when she joined a congressionally mandated research team doing an epidemiological study of Vietnam veterans. Her findings about the long-term consequences of surviving violence in adulthood have led to a career of research, writing, and teaching about the psychodynamic causes and consequences of adult onset trauma.
The culmination of three decades of studying and treating survivors of adult onset trauma, Wounded by Reality is the first systematic attempt to differentiate adult onset trauma from childhood trauma, with which it is frequently confused.
When catastrophic events overtake adult lives, they often scar the psyche in ways that psychodynamically oriented clinicians struggle to understand. For Ghislaine Boulanger, the enormous challenge of working with these patients is unsurprising. Survivors of major catastrophe, whether a natural disaster, a life-threatening assault, a serious accident, or an act of terrorism, experience a near-fatal disruption of fundamental aspects of self experience. The sense of agency, of affectivity, of bodily integrity, the capacity for self-reflection, the sense of time, and the ability to relate to others - all are called into question.
Toward a Psychodynamic Understanding of Adult Onset Trauma. Catastrophic Dissociation and Childhood Trauma: Some Distinctions. The Cost of Survival: Historical Perspectives on Adult Onset Trauma. Wounded by Reality: The Relational Turn. The Core Self in Crisis: Deconstructing Catastrophic Dissociation. The Relational Self in Crisis: Further Deconstructing Catastrophic Dissociation. From Voyeur to Witness: The Crisis in Symbolic Functioning During Catastrophic Dissociation. The Ancient Mariner's Dilemma: Constructing a Trauma Narrative. The Strength Found in Innocence: Resistance to Working Psychodynamically with Survivors of Adult Onset Trauma. The Psychological Politics of Catastrophe: Local, Personal, and Professional.
Toward a Psychodynamic Understanding of Adult Onset Trauma. Catastrophic Dissociation and Childhood Trauma: Some Distinctions. The Cost of Survival: Historical Perspectives on Adult Onset Trauma. Wounded by Reality: The Relational Turn. The Core Self in Crisis: Deconstructing Catastrophic Dissociation. The Relational Self in Crisis: Further Deconstructing Catastrophic Dissociation. From Voyeur to Witness: The Crisis in Symbolic Functioning During Catastrophic Dissociation. The Ancient Mariner's Dilemma: Constructing a Trauma Narrative. The Strength Found in Innocence: Resistance to Working Psychodynamically with Survivors of Adult Onset Trauma. The Psychological Politics of Catastrophe: Local, Personal, and Professional.
When catastrophic events overtake adult lives, they often scar the psyche in ways that psychodynamically oriented clinicians struggle to understand. Survivors of major catastrophe, whether a natural disaster, a life-threatening assault,
When catastrophic events overtake adult lives, they often scar the psyche in ways that psychodynamically oriented clinicians struggle to understand. Survivors of major catastrophe, whether a natural disaster, a life-threatening assault,
"Ghislaine Boulanger´s remarkable book begins a new era of trauma therapy. She has overcome difficulties in psychoanalytic metapsychology to make two significant contributions: She clearly distinguishes the consequences of adult onset catastrophic trauma from childhood trauma; and she spells out the details of treating adult trauma. She shows how, in confronting sudden death and other overwhelming situations, the self is shattered; its component parts, such as memories and affect, are broken up and scattered. They become shield-like obstacles rather than tools to enhance the capacity to experience life and happiness fully. The life-maintaining resources are rendered ineffective. Boulanger demonstrates the obstacles that an analyst (or other therapist) encounters. She supplies the techniques to make treatment effective. She gives us a whole new way to help people whose problems are very difficult to treat."
- Henry Krystal, M.D.
Author, Integration and Self-Healing:Affect, Trauma, Alexithymia
"Ghislaine Boulanger has filled a critical gap in our knowledge with this beautifully written, exhaustively researched, highly readable book on catastrophic trauma in adulthood. Even those of us with secure childhoods, it turns out, are much more fragile than we would like to believe. Boulanger explores this harsh reality gently but authoritatively, in the context of a wealth of scholarship, and draws wise and clinically useful conclusions about helping the traumatized and those who love them. Because therapists of all orientations and interests may find themselves working with traumatized adults, and because prior approaches to the traumatized person have mostly neglected those wounded in adulthood by literally unbearable realities, this eloquent work deserves a place on the bookshelf of every clinician."
- Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D.
Author, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner´s Guide
"Wounded By Reality
is an exceptional work. Scholarly and inquiring, it integrates many theories and disciplines to address a neglected issue: adult onset trauma. Boulanger has a unique and expansive vision of dissociation; she challenges psychoanalysis even as she cherishes it. Her clinical material reflects a commitment to her patients' darkest times."
- Sue Grand, Ph.D.
Author, The Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical and Cultural Perspective
"Ghislaine Boulanger offers a useful and necessary review of how classical and recent psychoanalysts have conceptualized adult onset trauma. The rewards of this demanding and relentless interrogation are clear when Boulanger describes the transferential and countertransferential themes that emerge in clinical encounters with patients who have survived massive psychic trauma. These patients are themselves witnesses in search of a reliable witness for their testimony, so that it can be converted into history that can be remembered and therefore forgotten -- at least for a while. Every psychoanalyst should be aware of these new patients, who are, in fact, as old as psychoanalysis itself, but who now knock at our door with increasing urgency. It is better to be prepared for that difficult but potentially rewarding encounter."
- Jean-Max Gaudillière & Françoise Davoine
Authors, History Beyond Trauma: Whereof one cannot speak...thereof one cannot stay silent
"This book is both fascinating and rewarding and provides the reader with a rich source of ideas and insight into a topic that is so relevant to the twenty-first century and clinical work."
- Journal of Analytical Psychology, 53, 2008
Offers a systematic attempt to differentiate adult onset trauma from childhood trauma, with which it is frequently confused. This book shows how survivors of major catastrophe, whether a natural disaster, a life-threatening assault, or an act of terrorism, experience a near-fatal disruption of fundamental aspects of self experience.
Klappentext
The culmination of three decades of studying and treating survivors of adult onset trauma, Wounded by Reality is the first systematic attempt to differentiate adult onset trauma from childhood trauma, with which it is frequently confused.
When catastrophic events overtake adult lives, they often scar the psyche in ways that psychodynamically oriented clinicians struggle to understand. For Ghislaine Boulanger, the enormous challenge of working with these patients is unsurprising. Survivors of major catastrophe, whether a natural disaster, a life-threatening assault, a serious accident, or an act of terrorism, experience a near-fatal disruption of fundamental aspects of self experience. The sense of agency, of affectivity, of bodily integrity, the capacity for self-reflection, the sense of time, and the ability to relate to others - all are called into question.rn
