Unprocessed trauma deadening the capacity to think and feel

This paper describes a psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a traumatized and severely neglected patient. This patient deadened his mind in adapting to this trauma. His self-deadening is understood as a destructive adaptation to a traumatically impinging environment, escaping from unbearable internal states. This patient deadened his capacity to think and to experience emotions to survive feelings about his parents’ neglectful and abusive behaviour towards him. Development of the capacity to think has occupied many prominent psychoanalytic thinkers. Some contemporary authors’ views on the development of the capacity to think enrich the understanding of this patient’s adaptation to trauma. Ferenczi’s concepts of trauma and identification with the aggressor and a contemporary perspective on Klein’s understanding of the repetition compulsion contribute to an understanding of this patient’s adaptation to trauma and neglect. The patient’s transition from childhood traumas expressed in repetition compulsion to an increasing capacity to contain and consciously think about the traumatic experiences is described, as is the limits of what could be accomplished in this therapy, with consideration of the reasons for these limits. This case illustrates the effect on the development of a capacity to think of unprocessed trauma and neglect and a psychoanalytic approach to treating this.