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Trauma and Human Existence

Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic, and Philosophical Reflections

• By Robert D. Stolorow

Normal Price: $19.95

Our Web Price: $17.96add to cart

• Price: $19.95 $17.96
• Binding: Paperback
• Pages: 62
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 27th June 2007
• ISBN: 978-0-88163-467-9

About the Book

Trauma and Human Existence effectively interweaves two themes central to emotional trauma - the first pertains to the contextuality of emotional life in general, and of the experience of emotional trauma in particular, and the second pertains to the recognition that the possibility of emotional trauma is built into the basic constitution of human existence.

This volume traces how both themes interconnect, largely as they crystallize in the author’s personal experience of traumatic loss. As discussed in the book's final chapter, whether or not this constitutive possibility will be brought lastingly into the foreground of our experiential world depends on the relational contexts in which we live.

Taken as a whole, Trauma and Human Existence exhibits the unity of the deeply personal, the theoretical, and the philosophical in the understanding of emotional trauma and the place it occupies in human existence.

Reviews

"Stolorow’s Trauma and Human Existence is a remarkable integration of deep self-reflections on intimate, often painful, and sometimes tragic experience, his philosophical investigation of selfhood in living context, and psychoanalytic theorizing on time, affect, and trauma. His powerful conclusion utilizes recent critiques of Heideggerian philosophy to examine even death as an essentially relational phenomenon. This is an important addition to the now long line of works that constitute the corpus of Stolorow and colleagues’ intersubjectivity theory." - Lewis Aron, Ph.D., Director, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis

"In his new book, Robert Stolorow has accomplished a minor miracle, presenting for the reader a theoretically complex, philosophically strong, and yet almost unbearably sad and humane understanding of traumatic experience. It successfully portrays the overwhelming, all-encompassing, and ever-enduring effects of tragic loss, using the premature death of his young wife some sixteen years ago to illustrate how the event forever colors his own experience. Anyone reading this book must take away from it not only a heightened appreciation for the uses of philosophical-psychoanalytic investigation and integration, but as important, a greater understanding of one’s own private life in which traumatic loss surely plays its central organizing role." - Estelle Shane, Ph.D., President, International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology

"Robert Stolorow has done a masterful job of integrating two central themes: one involving the context-dependence of the experience of emotional trauma and the other relating to the idea that emotional trauma is built into the basic foundation of our existence. It represents psychoanalysis at its finest – its themes are beautifully conceptualized, richly exemplified, and profoundly relevant." - Judith Alpert, Ph.D., President, Division of Trauma Psychology, American Psychological Association

"This is a fascinating, phenomenologically rich reflection on emotional trauma that shows the surprisingly powerful relevance of Heidegger for contemporary psychoanalysis." - Simon Critchley, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research

"What I find particularly impressive, indeed touching, about [this] new book is its deeply personal note. The unconventional approach Stolorow has courageously adopted makes the book strikingly human and dignified, demonstrating that the themes being discussed are not theoretical constructs but of utmost relevance to our personal lives." - Esa Saarinen, Ph.D., Helsinki University of Technology

"Robert D. Stolorow's new book...is a poetic and deeply poignant study of psychological trauma. The work is richly nuanced, yet at a mere 50 pages of text, elegantly brief. It is a remarkable addition to the trauma literature and stands to become an essential volume in the library of anyone seeking to understand trauma. It brilliantly synthesizes insights from psychoanalytic psychology and phenomenological philosophy and in doing so provides the reader with an experience-near understanding of the complexities and vicissitudes of psychological trauma. The work elegantly manages to convey a profound mastery of the nuances of trauma in a manner in which no prior work has achieved. Trauma and Human Existence is a work that will be read many times over by those who first encounter it, with new wisdom to be discovered with each reading. It is succinct, yet incisive and stirring. It leaves a lasting impression." - Marilyn Jacobs, Ph.D., Trauma Psychology Newsletter

"Trauma and Human Existence is literally a slight book but with weighty themes. Stolorow has written a book based on years of theorizing and clinical practice. The simple structure of this book allows for repeated powerful statements that are based on decades of serious and creative thinking about good clinical listening....What is most impressive to me about Trauma and Human Experience is that the author makes the serious attempt, in the year 2008, to reintroduce an underutilized philosophical narrative to psychoanalysis." - Spyros Orfanos, Ph.D., PsycCRITIQUES

"Stolorow's exploration of trauma and the context of human emotions is extremely thorough, detailed and at times deeply touching. Although a 'short' book, Stolorow presents a detailed theoretical and personal account of mood, unconscious, temporality and therapeutic change which draws upon the thought of Gadamer, intersubjective theory, and primarily the philosophical work of Heidegger. As such, Trauma and Human Existence would be of interest to both practicing psychotherapists seeking to integrate philosophical insights into their work, and philosophers interested in the 'lived experience' of existentialist thought." - Laura Cook, Metapsychology Online

"This book takes the reader step-by-step through some of Stolorow's most remarkable thinking to date. Weaving his love affair with philosophy with his decades-long passion for positioning affect, and now, emotional trauma, within a relational, contextual field, Stolorow accomplishes a lot in a surprisingly brief treatise. Though often dense, and at times poignantly heart-wrenching, [it] is immensely readable. Unsurprisingly, he makes a valuable contribution to the psychoanalytic literature on trauma and its vicissitudes." - Nancy VanDerHeide, Psy.D., Psychologist-Psychoanalyst

"A great deal of respect and of delicacy is required to approach Robert Stolorow’s most recent effort, which bears a particularly evocative title, Trauma and Human Existence. This is not just because this short, perceptive little book proves from the very beginning to be an adventurous exploration of extremely sensitive, profound areas of Dasein, Martin Heidegger’s important existential statement of human existence, but above all because of its autobiographical aspect, for it is the ripe, hard-won fruit of a difficult period of its author’s life. There is all the power and intensity of a human event, the turmoil of traumatic inconsolable grief, the courage of thinking that exposes and subjects itself to existence, to its reality, its flesh." - Antonio Sichera, Studies in Gestalt Therapy

Table of Contents

1. The Contextuality of Emotional Life 2. The Contextuality of Emotional Trauma 3. The Phenomenology of Trauma and the Absolutisms of Everyday Life 4. Trauma and Temporality 5. Trauma and the "Ontological Unconscious" 6. Anxiety, Authenticity, and Trauma 7. Conclusions: Siblings in the Same Darkness.

About the Author(s)

Robert D. Stolorow, Ph.D. is a Founding Faculty Member and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, a Founding Faculty Member at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, New York City; and a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. He has coauthored four other books for the Analytic Press: Working Intersubjectively: Contextualism in Psychoanalytic Practice (1997), Contexts of Being: The Intersubjective Foundations of Psychological Life (1992), Psychoanalytic Treatment: An Intersubjective Approach (1987), Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Phenomenology (1984).

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