Emotional Trauma in Review - Part 1

A - The Complexity of Emotional Trauma
Judith Herman’s (1992) synthesis of psychological trauma remains, in my opinion, unsurpassed. It is the standard to which I return time and again.
“Psychological trauma is an affliction of the powerless. At the moment of trauma the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.”
In other terms, traumatic events shatter what Stolorow (2007) refers to as ‘the absolutisms of everyday life’: “When a person says to a friend, “I’ll see you later” or a parent says to a child at bedtime, “I’ll see you in the morning,” these are statements whose validity is open for discussion. Such absolutisms are the basis for a kind of naïve realism that allow one to function in the world, experienced as stable and predictable. It is in the essence of emotional trauma that it shatters these absolutisms, a catastrophic loss of innocence that permanently alters one’s sense of being-in-the-world.” (emphasis added).
In Herman’s view, “[t]raumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life…They confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror, and evoke responses of catastrophe…the salient characteristic of the traumatic event is its power to inspire helplessness and terror.”
According to Jones (1995), “If trauma is limited to what is “shattering” and “devastating” –war neurosis, concentration camp phenomena, massive physical and/or sexual abuse- then we are likely to miss the more subtle manifestations of traumatic states. What is needed is an operational definition of traumatic states. I suggest that our behavioral response points toward a definition…affects are presymbolic signals that convey information; the organism uses these affective signals to appraise the situation and take effective action. Defined operationally, a traumatized state occurs when a person is unable to respond appropriately and effectively to a situation; in turn, this inability to respond is signaled by anxiety-panic… If we reserve the term trauma for those situations that evoke anxiety-panic, then we have defined both in operational terms. This is the definition of traumatic anxiety that Freud (1926) proposed, but which has been lost due to the shifting meanings of “trauma.”’
The varied manifestations of emotional trauma can be grouped into three main categories: hyperarousal, intrusion, and constriction. “Hyperarousal reflects the persistent expectation of danger; intrusion reflects the indelible imprint of the traumatic moments; constriction reflects the numbing response of surrender.” (Herman, 1992)
“People subjected to prolonged, repeated trauma develop an insidious, progressive…[condition]…that invades and erodes the personality. While the victim of a single acute trauma may feel after the event that she is “not herself,” the victim of chronic trauma may feel herself to be changed irrevocably, or she may lose the sense that she has any self at all.”
I will consider physiological and psychological hyperarousal in post number 2 of this series.
Intrusion
Intrusive symptoms after a single acute trauma tend to abate in weeks or months. In survivors of prolonged, repeated trauma these symptoms persist for many years with little change. The traumatic experiences become encoded in memories which break spontaneously into consciousness, both during waking hours as well as during sleep. Small, seemingly insignificant occurrences can also evoke these memories which are experienced with their original vividness and emotional force.
Traumatic memories are encoded as vivid sensations and images, and lack verbal narrative and content, thus resembling the memories of young children. The intense focus on fragmentary sensation, on image without context, gives the traumatic memories a heightened reality. Lacking symbolic content, these memories are expressed in action. This is most apparent in the repetitive play of children. Commonly, traumatized people find themselves reenacting some aspect of the damaging experience in disguised for, without realizing what they are doing. Some reenactments put the survivor at risk for further harm. According to Herman, “There is something uncanny about reenactments. Even when they are consciously chosen, they have a feeling of involuntariness. Even when they are not dangerous, they have a driven, tenacious quality. Freud named this recurrent intrusion of traumatic experience the ‘repetition compulsion’.”
There is general agreement in the field, that the repetitive reliving of traumatic experiences are spontaneous, unsuccessful attempts at healing. The driving force of the reenactments is the emotional rather than the cognitive experience of the trauma. What is reenacted are the overwhelming, crushing emotional experiences in an attempt, however unsuccessful, to integrate them. In treatment, in Herman’s words, “[b]ecause reliving a traumatic experience…[entails]…such intense emotional distress, traumatized people go to great lengths to avoid it. The effort to ward off intrusive symptoms, though self-protective in intent, further aggravates the {emotional trauma], for the attempt to avoid reliving the trauma too often results in a narrowing of consciousness, a withdrawal from engagement with others, and an impoverished life.”


Constriction
“When a person is completely powerless, and any form of resistance is futile, she may go into a state of surrender. The system of self defense (see post number 2) shuts down entirely. The helpless person escapes from her situation not by action in the real world but rather by altering her state of consciousness. Analogous states are observed in animals, who sometimes “freeze” when they are attacked … These altered states of consciousness are at the heart of constriction or numbing … “
In a superbly crafted paragraph, Herman goes on to say, “Sometimes situations of inescapable danger1 may evoke not only terror and rage but also, paradoxically, a state of detached calm, in which terror, rage, and pain dissolve. Events continue to register in awareness, but it is as though these events have been disconnected from their ordinary meanings. Perceptions may be numbed or distorted, with partial anesthesia or loss of particular sensations. The sense of time may be altered, often with a sense of slow motion, and the experience may lose its quality of ordinary reality. The person may feel as though she is observing from outside her body, or as though the whole experience is a bad dream from which she will shortly awaken. These perceptual changes combine with a feeling of indifference, emotional detachment, and profound passivity in which the person relinquishes all initiative and struggle. This altered state of consciousness may be regarded as one of nature’s small mercies, a protection against unbearable [emotional] pain.”
Herman explains further, “These detached states of consciousness are similar to hypnotic trance states. They share the same features of surrender of voluntary action, suspension of initiative and critical judgment, subjective detachment or calm, enhanced perception of imagery, altered sensation, including depersonalization, derealization, and change in the sense of time. While heightened perceptions occurring during traumatic events resemble the phenomena of hypnotic absorption, the numbing symptoms resemble the complimentary phenomena of hypnotic dissociation.”
The features of emotional trauma that become most pronounced in chronic trauma are avoidance or constriction. Herman suggests “[w]hen the victim has been reduced to the goal of simple survival, psychological constriction becomes an essential form of adaptation. This narrowing applies to every aspect of life –to relationships, activities, thoughts, memories, emotions, and even sensations– …this constriction…also leads to a kind of atrophy in the psychological capacities that have been suppressed and to the overdevelopment of a solitary inner life.”
She continues, “The constrictive symptoms of [emotional trauma] apply not only to thought, memory, and states of consciousness, but also to the entire field of purposeful action and initiative. In an effort to create some sense of safety and to control their pervasive fear, traumatized people restrict their lives.”
And concludes, “In avoiding any situations reminiscent of the past trauma, or any initiative that might involve future planning and risk, traumatized people deprive themselves of those new opportunities for successful coping that might mitigate the effect of the traumatic experience. Thus, constrictive symptoms though they may represent an attempt to defend against overwhelming emotional states, exact a high price for whatever protection they afford. They narrow and deplete the quality of life and ultimately perpetuate the effects of the traumatic [experiences].”
Nevertheless, if as therapists, we keep in mind the ‘incomparable power of human recognition’, then we can acknowledge to our patients their countervailing efforts to reintegrate a fragmenting world and restore a sense of continuous and coherent being, thus providing one more opportunity for healing (Stolorow, Atwood, & Orange, 2002).
In closing, I would like to offer an important question that Stolorow, Atwood, & Orange (2002) address. “Why does one person respond to trauma with a successful act of dissociation, leaving the organization of his or her world otherwise relatively intact, whereas another react with an experience of self- and world dissolution?”
They begin to provide an answer pointing out that intersubjective systems theory as a “post-Cartesian psychoanalytic theory, while not denying the existence of an individual’s strengths, recognizes that anyone ‘s resources only come into play within specific intersubjective fields. In addition, the nature of trauma itself is understood to vary as a partial function of the relational and historical context in which it occurs (Stolorow & Atwood, 1992). The trauma experience that leads to annihilation, embedded in its own distinctive context, is likely to differ markedly from the one in which dissociation takes place.”
Then, they conclude: “The trauma that annihilates subverts the person’s whole way of making sense of his or her life and attacks sustaining connections to the human surround at their most fundamental level; the trauma that can be dissociated, although also a threat to existing organizations of experience, leaves sustaining ties intact to some degree, so that a stable platform of selfhood and worldhood survives for the encapsulation and dissociation of the traumatic event.”
B - Affective-Symbolic Disintegration
Jones (1995) defines the sense of self as “the personal organization we experience when we are able to effectively integrate our affective experience with what we think in a relatively stable internal relationship. In other words, it is the ability of the individual to create a relationship between his feeling core and his thinking “I” that is at the heart of selfhood. It is the affective-symbolic integration that leads to the creation of a sense of self.”
Jones holds that affects are our primary process because they are our first and only information processing system until the arrival of thought at about 10-12 months of age. He conceptualizes affects as “the experiential representation of a nonsymbolic information-processing system that can serve as the central control mechanism for all aspects of human behavior, including the control of physical movement, memory, and all interactions with the environment... affects, and affects alone, serve as the primary control signals for all animals and presymbolic infants.” The developmental task during this period is learning to use our body.
Thought is our second information-processing system. “At some specific point in time, perhaps as early as eight to ten months of age, the program that will eventually lead to speech is activated… Consequently, symbolic functioning –what we usually call thinking- must be layered upon and eventually integrated into the smooth, presymbolic affective information processing system of infancy. These two discrete ways of processing information form the substrate of the “divided mind”; the necessity of integrating them results in the rapprochement crisis…” The developmental task with the arrival of thought becomes learning to use our mind, that is, “effectively [integrating] our affective experience with what we think in a relatively stable internal relationship.” I try to capture the essence of this process with the metaphor of ‘learning to think with our heart.’
Jones describes an example of affective-symbolic integration in his discussion of the attainment of object constancy as cognitive development: “At somewhere around 10 to 12 months, the infant begins to acquire the ability to use symbols, a process crowned by the first spoken word at approximately 18 months; the ability to attach names to things leads to the formation of concepts. Nouns are the first type of speech the infant uses; typically, they describe phenomenologic objects in the world-out-there (Mama, Daddy, cat, etc.). As used in the psychoanalytic literature, the term internal object must refer to these first concepts; otherwise, the term is simply redundant for a presymbolic schematic representation or has no meaning at all. Similarly, the term object relations does not refer to the infant’s first experience of relationship, but, rather, to his first attempts to symbolize or conceptualize that experience. If one holds to this definition of object, object constancy occurs when the infant achieves the ability to maintain the concept of his mother in his mind even when experiencing high-intensity negative feelings –rage, hatred- directed toward her. In other words, object constancy (or its equivalents, libidinal object constancy and emotional object constancy) implies conceptual stability despite the presence of intense affectivity.” (emphasis in original)
I believe the relative stability of the reciprocally -regulating affective-symbolic network is the crucial factor, too much or too little of each component can cause a disruption. Thought can act as a brake on emotions to keep us from acting impulsively; we call the outcome of this exercise will power. Emotions enliven our intellectual life, rendering it colorful and creative; intense affectivity, however, can cause conceptual instability. These assumptions parallel our everyday observations about ourselves and others; we experience greater difficulty in maintaining our integrated state –“keeping our shit together”- when experiencing intense negative emotions.
In Herman’s (1992) view, “[t]raumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life…They confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror, and evoke responses of catastrophe…the salient characteristic of the traumatic event is its power to inspire helplessness and terror.”
Extreme helplessness and terror (intense affectivity) cause affective-symbolic disintegration; that is, the disintegration - characteristic of a traumatized state of mind- of our world of experience at the center of which is our sense of self, our enduring center in relation to which the totality of our experiences are organized. This is truly a psychological catastrophe (Stolorow, Atwood, & Orange, 2002). I examine the physiological aspects of this catastrophe in post #3.
Ernesto Vasquez, MD
April 11, 2010

References
Jones, J. Affects as Process. Northvale, NJ, The Analytic Press, 1995.
Herman, J.L. Trauma and Recovery. New York, NY, Basic Books, 1992.
Stolorow, R.D., Atwood, G.E., & Orange, D.M. Worlds of Experience. New York, NY, Basic Books, 2002.
Stolorow, R.D. Trauma and Human Existence. New York, NY, The Analytic Press, 2007.

Is Stolorow's Intersubjectivity Intersubjective? Philip Ringstrom in Tampa Bay

Philip Ringstrom delighted the intimate group -- particularly students in attendance from the Tampa Bay Institute of Psychoanalytic Studies, Inc (T-BIPS) who are learning to think critically-- with his critique of Stolorow, Atwood, and Orange’s Worlds of Experience (2002) on Sunday, March 21, 2010 at the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Inc. (TBPS). An interesting juxtaposition for Tampa Bay, as Stolorow had recently (Jan 2010) discussed his work in Tampa, this book was currently being read at T-BIPS. Ringstrom also contrasted these authors, who write as if with one voice, to Relational authors who, celebrating difference, write in separate voices.

Stolorow, et al had a theory of intersubjectivity which posited that it was not trauma per se which proved traumatic but instead the absence of attuned responsiveness, along with feeling shamed for one’s reactions to trauma, which proved traumatic. Ringstrom claims that Stolorow, as a result of experiencing his own personal trauma and finding no comfort in the attuned responses from others, had a crisis of theory: Stolorow distinguished attunement not supplied with attunement not felt. Ringstrom thinks Stolorow has a hidden moral agenda, when, after turning to philosophy, particularly Heidegger, Trauma and Human Existence(2007) splits the world into those who have been traumatized, their absolutisms shattered (brothers and sisters in darkness) and therefore, consequently, the only ones awakened to authenticity, and those who have not been traumatized and therefore continue to live in delusion. Stolorow finds the two incommensurable.

Ringstrom finds this incommensurability at odds with intersubjectivity, for intersubjectivity, per Stolorow et al, says all is contextualized. Likewise, if Stolorow et al had previously seen as normal delusions which are protective after the shattering of absolutisms, how now, when these delusions are shattered, do traumatized people become the only ones who are normal/authentic? And if only those who are traumatized can supply, in a kind of twinship, attunement to other victims of trauma, Relational theorists might ask how then does Stolorow’s intersubjectivity confront difference? While Stolorow sees twinship as a consequence of trauma, Ringstrom asks what becomes of Kohut’s idea that there exists an innate longing for twinship? (He refers us to Ilene Philipson’s Pathologizing Twinship.) Ringstrom adds that twinship is also a cult dynamic, splitting ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and sees the us/them mentality as a failure (see Benjamin’s work) of intersubjectivity.

Instead, Ringstrom considers a part of what is traumatic to include the unimaginable. In Heidegger’s being toward death, there is an awareness of death, and the question is whether, at the end of one’s life, one has lived an authentic life or not. Ringstrom referred to the paradox eloquently described by Irwin Hoffmann: that death is both a necessary boundary to ascribe meaning to life and renders life meaningless. Ringstrom cautions against confusing this death anxiety with death trauma. The audience, too, noted the difficulty of taking personal experience and generalizing it to a theory.

'Being Toward Death'

The Self Psychology Study Group of the Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies, Inc. had its usual 'waging of dialogue' when it discussed, yesterday, the final chapters in Robert Stolorow's book "Trauma and Human Existence." Stolorow emphasized two points: that emotional life is context embedded; and that emotional trauma is constitutive of human existence. In the discussion, Peter Rudnytsky highlighted "the tension between a 'relational' view of trauma, which emphasizes the context-dependency that makes some experiences traumatic but not others, and an 'ontological' view, which posits that there is something inherently traumatic in human existence and our 'being-toward' death." Peter noted that "Stolorow says something close to this in his last chapter," and also noted that he wished [Stolorow] had brought it out in the previous chapter, where Peter thought that Stolorow's "presentation of Heidegger accepted too uncritically the premise that death is an essentially non-relational phenomenon."


Because of the finitude of human existence and the finitude of emotional connections with others, I thought Stolorow intimates that we should 'be with' each other in grief: he writes: we are "deeply connected with one another in virtue of our common[italics, his] finitude," that is, we have a "kinship-in-finitude,' or what Vogel called "brothers and sisters in the same dark"[ness].

I think many of us know this to be so. After 9/11, we, for a moment, thought we might be just a little kinder to one another, for life is precarious as well as precious. We were shaken from our everyday denial of (a turning away from?) death. And in moments of crisis, trauma, or loss, it is the lucky who find a "relational home" with family and friends. Stolorow writes, "Loss can be an emotional trauma for which it is especially difficult to find a relational home." William Upshaw pointed out yesterday how the psychotherapeutic relationship allows a relational home -- for sorrow and grief and loss, and for authenticity.

Stolorow's phrase "authentic being toward death" led me to consider that authenticity is a dialogue, a dialectic if you will, and that one cannot be authentic 'toward death' without also being so toward life, holding in tension this unpredictable but certain looming reality of death alongside the reaching for, the deeply living of, life. Stolorow quotes Critchley: "death and finitude are fundamentally relational." For me, when I contemplate my own death, I think of how it will affect those loved ones left behind, and I assure them now that my life is, has been, full, and so they need not worry on my account. As for those I have loved and lost, while part of me is diminished, that loss is held in tension with the gratitude of what that love brought to my life.

Lycia Alexander-Guerra

A Day with Stolorow, Part II

In the afternoon of Saturday, January 9, 2010, Robert Stolorow, PhD spoke to the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Inc on “Contextual and Existential Dimensions of Trauma,” allowing us to experience why he is sometimes called ‘the prince of darkness.’ In his talk, Stolorow noted the contextuality and embeddedness of emotional life, and of emotional trauma, in particular.

A child requires affective attunement from another to assist in tolerance of emotion. Affect tolerance, then, is a property of a relational system. In fact, intolerance of an affect state or of a trauma is unrelated to the quantity or intensity of that affect or trauma, but instead it is the absence of emotional attunement that renders affects or traumas unassimilatable.

Painful emotional experience becomes enduringly traumatic in the absence of emotional attunement, i.e. trauma is context sensitive. Death, and finitude (our limitations), are constitutively relational. It is “the incomparable power of understanding” (George Atwood) that mitigates the finitude of relationality.

Existentially, trauma shatters absolutisms and exposes the fragility of illusions of invulnerability with which we move through the world. Unassimilated trauma leads one to feel dreadful alienation and estrangement and exposes us to the randomness and unpredictability of life. Stolorow expands what Heidegger wrote about the authentic being toward death by adding being toward loss.

He noted that, while trauma produces feelings, there also exist feelings about these trauma-induced feelings. Clinically, it is the secondary feelings that often must be explored first, as patients may feel shame about exposing the trauma-induced feelings. Retraumatization may occur when an experience closely replicates the original trauma; when it confirms the organizing principles established by the traumatic experience; or when there is loss of the bond that served to counteract the trauma.

Lycia Alexander-Guerra, MD

photo by John Lambert, LCSW

Trust, Contextualization, and Trauma: Documenting Holocaust Experiences of Homosexuals

Film: Paragraph 175

By William Spell
presented November 8, 2009 at the Film Series: Fear of Difference: The Diversity of Holocaust Experiences, Tampa, FL

Our presence here together unites us for a living tribute to the courageous Holocaust survivors of the documentary Paragraph 175 as well as all survivors of genocidal trauma. The seven remarkably articulate elders emerge from these interviews with a seemingly impossible grace and eloquence, putting words to unbearable experience.

I am also in awe of this achievement by the director-producers, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, their partner in production, Michael Ehrenzweig and their many talented collaborators, who with the inspiring guidance of Klaus Muller, have set a sensitive stage and created a trusting rapport with each survivor.….for their voices to be heard and their beautiful faces to be seen with a clarifying light.

Dr. Doris Brothers, in her paper, Trust, Uncertainty and Therapeutic Alliance in Trauma-Centered Treatment suggests that “trauma does not reside in a specific event alone, but rather in the meanings of that event for the individual involved.” And she places “the focus of treatment on the trustworthiness of the relational engagement of analyst and patient.”

We see from the beginning of this project, a resistance and ongoing crisis of trust when Klaus telephones to confirm a meeting, Karl Gorath answers, “Not today” and later in person, Karl agrees to the session.

.....Pierre Seele, arriving at the train station feeling sick, not wanting to proceed, feeling hostile toward Klaus and offended by his black leather jacket, not wanting to shake hands with a German and paranoid about Klaus’ intentions.

Heinz F. speaks for the first time with another person about his 8 ¼ years in the concentration camps of Dachau, Mauthausen and Buchenwald, confined for being a homosexual. He fears using his surname for the film and initially requests that his face be seen in an anonymous silhouette of dark shadow.

From listening to the director’s added commentary on the DVD, I learned that Heinz F. upon viewing the monitor and seeing how dark his image appeared, decided that he wanted his face to be seen, since at age 93 he felt that he hadn’t much time left for the rest of his life.

There was a survivor living in Poland who ultimately declined being interviewed on film because he was battling with the fear of being publicly exposed as a homosexual.

Another German man who was castrated by the Nazis, had given consent to participate when, on the day of his filming, someone helping with the production told his landlady that he was going to be interviewed. When he found out that she knew this, he became very upset and refused to continue and Klaus spent a lot of time calming and comforting him.

The directors discuss their experience of a troubling ambivalence as they respectfully engaged Albrecht Becker, arrested for his homosexuality by the Nazis. Albrecht explains the alarming indifference and passivity of many German citizens to their widespread, word-of-mouth knowledge of the death camps.

Michael Ehrenzweig affirms that without Klaus having established relationships of safety and trust with the film’s subjects over a period of years, this ground breaking documentary would not have been possible.

Dr. Lycia Alexander-Guerra, in her presentation for the Tampa Bay Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies’ Trauma Workshop Series, discussed how, physiologically, traumatic memories are dissociated, de-contextualized from each other, and unlinked to words. In referencing the work of Dr. Jody Messler Davies and Dr. Gail Frawley, she discussed how re-enactments of experiences which lack words can become an opportunity for the therapist to lend words and help construct meanings with the survivor of previously unspeakable traumas.

Klaus encourages Heinz Dormer’s painstaking, verbal descriptions of “the singing forest”. There are haunting silences between Heinz Dormer’s words, the palpable “goosebumps” and his powerful gaze, contained by Klaus.

After approaching the abyss again, I was relieved to hear Heinz find his open-ended meanings, in his words: “inhuman” “beyond human comprehension” “inexplicable” “and much remains untold”.

Heinz F. and Klaus offered words freely and tenderly to one another. Heinz F., often tearfully sobbing, spoke of his shame. “It’s all about patiently carrying one’s burden”. When asked if there was anyone he could have spoken with, he insisted, “Never!” “Nobody wanted to hear about it” “If you would just mention one of those words…..Leave me alone with this stuff---it’s over now and done with”.

Dr. Sam Gerson's paper, When the Third is Dead: Memory, Mourning, and Witnessing in the Aftermath of the Holocaust is in press: International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2010.

Paragraph 175 remained a law until 1968 in East Germany and 1969 in West Germany. Homosexuals continued to be classified as criminals. Heinz Dormer was re-arrested during the 1950s and 1960s.

Dr. Bruce Reis emphasizes that in the treatment of massive trauma the language of narration cannot translate away the raw pain of traumatic exposure. He recommends the work of Dr. Sue Grand in being a witness to trauma, illuminating silence and rendering it audible.

Dr. Ghislaine Boulanger represents therapeutic recognition as "when clinicians resonate to situations in their patient’s lives with which they can identify only too well; locating parallel experiences and feeling states in themselves. This often unacknowledged resonance between the patient’s and analyst’s experience signals a level of acceptance and understanding that can be transformative and promote analytic reflection.
However, when resonating to a familiar affect state is not possible, clinicians must be prepared to serve as containers and witnesses to terrifying and alienating experiences without losing their connection to the survivor. Inevitably, that connection is sometimes lost as the clinician struggles against his or her own tendency to dissociate in the face of horror."

Our hearts today contain these passages of love, hope, faith and devastating loss.

Annette Eick recounts the story of the miraculous “love letter” that saved her life, surviving only with her brother as her entire family perished in the camps.

Gad Beck remembering trying desperately to rescue and flee with his young lover, Manfred Lewin, who felt compelled to stay with and take care of his sick family, soon to go to their deaths in a camp. As Gad describes the moments of agony when he and Manfred were separated for the last time, he says, “I couldn’t think but I knew something was forever broken.”

Pierre Seele frantically beseeching Klaus, “Do you think I can talk about that?” “This is too much for my nerves, Klaus! I can’t do this anymore! I am ashamed for humanity.”

In the director’s commentary, Michael Ehrenzweig shares a story of the transformative power of Paragraph 175, the documentary.

Immediately following the film’s premiere showing in Berlin, Michael quickly joined Gad Beck and Pierre Seele in the audience and walked them slowly down the aisle to the stage, both men on each of his arms, as the fully packed theater gave them a standing ovation with thunderous applause.

Later that night Gad and Pierre sat at a café table nearby, holding hands and receiving the loving recognition and warm attention of many who had just seen their film. As a result, both men were inspired to subsequently travel extensively, speaking publicly and seeking official acknowledgement for their case and advocating support for other survivors. This reminds me of Dr. Adrienne Harris’ description of analytic process as “the shared labor of relational mourning.”

I feel this humbling work of art is an archive for all of humanity with the potential to inspire honesty and compassion for the understanding of massive traumatic experience and a caring acceptance of women desiring women and men desiring men.

-- Will Spell

References:

Alexander-Guerra, M.D., Lycia (2009). http://tbips.blogspot.com/2009/02/healing-through-witnessing.html

Boulanger, Ph.D., Ghislaine (2008). "Witnesses to Reality: Working Psychodynamically with Survivors of Terror." Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 18:638-657.

Brothers, Ph.D., Doris (2008). http://blogs.confer.uk.com/0809trauma/the-lead-paper.html

Gerson, Ph.D., Samuel (2010). "When The Third is Dead: Memory, Mourning, and Witnessing in the Aftermath of the Holocaust." IN PRESS: International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

Harris, Ph.D., Adrienne (2005). "Gender as Soft Assembly." Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

Reis, Ph.D., Bruce E. (2000). "A Review of the Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical and Cultural Perspective: Sue Grand. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 2000. xvi + 167 pp." Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 36:730-734.