Title: Narcissistic Trauma and the Possibility of Therapeutic Transformation through the Third Space

Narcissistic trauma constitutes one of the most fundamental and decisive experiences in aperson’s psychic life. It is a primary and somatized experience: the non-recognition of one’sexistence as a differentiated subject. The experience of not existing as an other, of beingrejected or forced into submission before one has even been constituted, founds the archaicwound of the subject.This trauma does not disappear with maturation; rather, it is inscribed in the psychic body asan unconscious memory that is reactivated in every encounter with oneself or the Other—notas recollection but as a scene that is replayed. At the center of this scene lies the deficit of the“between-us”—of the shared habitation of meaning.The aim of this essay is to investigate the nature and function of narcissistic trauma throughthe lens of contemporary psychoanalytic thought, placing special emphasis on the notion ofthe Third Space as a possibility for therapeutic transformation. The aim is to analyze theintersubjective dimension of relationships, to highlight the inner experience of trauma, and toexamine the possibility of transforming the primary wound from a feeling of non-existenceinto an experience that can be borne, that finds space and acceptance.