![]() ![]() Studies of adults in mental hospitals ( 1), adults suffering from multiple personalities ( 2), adults who are borderline ( 3), and adolescents who go on to commit murder ( 4) show that these adults and adolescents very often were abused or shocked in their own childhoods. We must not let ourselves forget childhood trauma just because the problem is so vast. Like the young photographer in Cortázar’s short story and Antonioni’s film, Blow Up, we may enlarge the diagnostic fine points of trauma into such prominence that we altogether lose the central point-that external forces created the internal changes in the first place. We must organize our thinking about childhood trauma, however, or we run the risk of never seeing the condition at all. If one projects this multiplicity of technically correct diagnoses onto a traumatized child’s adulthood, one finds even more diagnostic leeway. If one looks only at the clinical manifestations of trauma in a given day in the life of the traumatized child, one could diagnose conduct disorder, borderline personality, major affective disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity, phobic disorder, dissociative disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, adjustment disorder, and even such conditions, as yet unofficial in the nomenclature, as precursors of multiple personality or acute dissociative disorder, and not be wrong. Mental conditions brought on by horrible external events in childhood present a wide range of findings. Each finding of childhood trauma discussed by the author is illustrated with one or two case examples. In these instances, characteristics of both type I and type II childhood traumas exist side by side. Crossover conditions often occur after sudden, shocking deaths or accidents that leave children handicapped. Type H trauma includes denial and numbing, self-hypnosis and dissociation, and rage. Type I trauma includes full, detailed memories, “omens,” and misperceptions. She divides childhood trauma into two basic types and defines the findings that can be used to characterize each of these types. These are visualized or otherwise repeatedly perceived memories of the traumatic event, repetitive behaviors, trauma-specific fears, and changed attitudes about people, life, and the future. ![]() The author suggests four characteristics related to childhood trauma that appear to last for long periods of life, no matter what diagnosis the patient eventually receives. Like childhood rheumatic fever, psychic trauma sets a number of different problems into motion, any of which may lead to a definable mental condition. ![]() Childhood psychic trauma appears to be a crucial etiological factor in the development of a number of serious disorders both in childhood and in adulthood. ![]()
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