Risk factors and protective factors in symbiotic trauma - case studies

摘要

Three case-studies are presented in this paper, two women and one man, who sought psychotherapy for relationship difficulties that reflects what German psychologist Franz Ruppert named symbiotic trauma. The symbiotic trauma represents the trauma that develops in a child who grew up with a traumatized mother and/or traumatized father. This concept is based on three theories: attachment theory developed by John Bowlby, trauma theory developed by Gothfried Fischer, Peter Riedesser, Franz Ruppert and systemic family theory and constellation method as described by Murray Bowen and lately by Bert Hellinger. In Franz Ruppert's trauma theory we can find an interested perspective on personality splitting during trauma. In his view, there are three psychological structured that emerge after traumatization: healthy structures, traumatized structures and survival ones. In the case studies, we describe these structures, their expression, and their unique mixture resulted from the combination of risk and protective factors during the clients' childhood. The traumatized structures keep the feelings of helplessness, fear of death, pain induced by the abandonment. The survival structures express self-punishing thoughts, thoughts of getting strength and power by the intellectual and rational means, or those physical ones, the swinging between avoiding and searching for good relationships, psychosomatic difficulties, work or sport addiction, self-aggression and other daily problems. Healthy structures search for the resolution of own difficulties, accepts traumatizing experiences, learn and develop.