Memory Processing and the Healing Experience

Abstract

offer therapists insight and specific therapeutic tools for managing the complexity of processing experiences of past trauma / describes methods to facilitate planned memory processing sessions / the authors take the position of honoring the layers of defenses that the client has established to protect the ego structure, with a number of exceptions such as when clients exhibit symptoms of severe somatization, suicidality, homicidality, and protracted anxiety or depression description, presentation, and complexity of trauma victims / useful terms and definitions [memory retrieval, abreaction, flashbacks or spontaneous abreactions, memory processing, resolution, blending, integration] / components of memory / psychotherapeutic tasks during the beginning phase of treatment / planned memory-processing sessions/ advanced concepts in memory processing [combining memories, techniques for management of severe fragmentation, fractionation of a memory or fractionation of an amnestic barrier] / using other therapeutic modalities to process memories / personality traits and characterological management / contraindications for memory processing / posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in therapists / appendix: therapeutic tasks for each phase of treatment of trauma victims (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)