Skip to Main Content
14
Views
8
CrossRef citations
Altmetric

Article

Embodied Trauma: Using the Subsymbolic Mode to Access and Change Script Protocol in Traumatized Adults

Pages 165-175
Published online: 28 Dec 2017
 
Translator disclaimer

When people go through traumatic experiences, they often develop somatic symptoms that are the bodily expressions of deep psychological issues resulting from the trauma. This article analyzes the effects of trauma at the level of protocol with special attention to tortured individuals who have wounds that were intentionally and repeatedly inflicted by another. The author describes how such trauma is embodied in the subsymbolic mode, which involves the affective, somatic, sensory, and motor modes of mental processing. She shows how a traumatic experience in adulthood deeply impacts and changes the protocol level of the victim's psychological script. Special attention is given to the experience of violence and how intrapsychic and interpersonal changes resulting from trauma are represented in the therapeutic relationship through a subsymbolic mode. The author also describes how these understandings can be used in therapeutic work with traumatized individuals to help them change not through a cognitive process but through an actual relational experience.

Additional information

Author information

Cristina Caizzi

Cristina Caizzi, is a psychologist and psychotherapist and a Provisional Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy). She has a private practice in Rome and works with Invisible Wounds, a project of the Caritas Diocese of Rome where she has worked with torture victims since 2005. She is also a teacher and supervisor at Scuole Superiore in Psicologia Clinica—Istituto di Formazione e Ricerca per Educatori e Psicoterapeuti [Training and Research Institute for Educators and Psychotherapists] in Rome. Cristina is the coordinator of the scientific committee of Società Italiana di Analisi Transazionale [Italian Society of Transactional Analysis]. She can be reached at Viale Carmelo Bene, 335/BB1, 00139, Rome, Italy; e-mail: .
 

People also read