C-M and trauma work

• Call for questions and comments....... by Jessica Boitman, 10/14/98
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    • Difficult Work by Jim Duffy, 12/4/98
      
      

Jim,

I appreciate your thoughtful response. In my work with male partners around the abortion experience, as well as in my work with children who have experienced prolonged, pervasive trauma, I too find that a healthy respect for defenses goes a long way to disconfirming a trauma survivor's pathogenic belief that they are undeserving of protection. To your list of helpful theorists (and Briere's work is very good), I want to throw in Don Nathanson's work on affect modulation and Johnson's comprehensive work on character development, "Character Styles." Johnson is keen to point to the resonances between his work and Control-Mastery theory, specifically on just those ways in which disruptions in normal developmental tasks have their cognitive, behavioral and affective correlates in the form of "script decisions" or pathogenic beliefs about one's relational world. I'm pleased to continue to see synthetic work on the intersection of affect theory, psychoneuroimmunology, interpersonal-cognitive theories (like Control-Mastery)and evolutionary psychology. Much of our clinical work confirms the insights emerging from these "newer" researches (and vice-versa).

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