Trauma and memory
Subtitle: brain and body in a search for the living past : a practical guide for understanding and working with traumatic memory
By: Peter A. Levine ; foreword by Bessel A. Van Der Kolk, MD
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 181
ISBN-13: 9781583949948
Subjects: Post-traumatic stress disorder; Psychic trauma; Episodic memory; Memory disorders
Description: "In Trauma and Memory, bestselling author Dr. Peter Levine (creator of the Somatic Experiencing approach) tackles one of the most difficult and controversial questions of PTSD/trauma therapy: Can we trust our memories? While some argue that traumatic memories are unreliable and not useful, others insist that we absolutely must rely on memory to make sense of past experience. Building on his 45 years of successful treatment of trauma and utilizing case studies from his own practice, Dr. Levine suggests that there are elements of truth in both camps. While acknowledging that memory can be trusted, he argues that the only truly useful memories are those that might initially seem to be the least reliable: memories stored in the body and not necessarily accessible by our conscious mind. While much work has been done in the field of trauma studies to address "explicit" traumatic memories in the brain (such as intrusive thoughts or flashbacks), much less attention has been paid to how the body itself stores "implicit" memory, and how much of what we think of as "memory" actually comes to us through our (often unconsciously accessed) felt sense. By learning how to better understand this complex interplay of past and present, brain and body, we can adjust our relationship to past trauma and move into a more balanced, relaxed state of being. Written for trauma sufferers as well as mental health care practitioners, Trauma and Memory is a groundbreaking look at how memory is constructed and how influential memories are on our present state of being"--

"Discusses different types of memory formation, especially traumatic memory, and how somatic or body-based memory can be utilized in the therapeutic process"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: Lay of the land; title: Memory: gift and curse; title: The fabric of memory; title: Procedural memory; title: Emotions, procedural memories, and the structure of trauma; title: A hero's journey; title: Two case studies: an intimate visit; title: The veracity trap and the pitfall of false memory; title: Molecules of memory; title: Generational trauma: hauntings.