Witnessing across Time: Accessing the Present from the Past and The Past from the Present
@article{Stern2012WitnessingAT, title={Witnessing across Time: Accessing the Present from the Past and The Past from the Present}, author={D. Stern}, journal={The Psychoanalytic Quarterly}, year={2012}, volume={81}, pages={53 - 81} }
We are used to the idea that trauma in the past interrupts our capacity to grasp the present. But present or recent trauma can have a similar dissociative effect on our capacity to experience the more distant past. Contemporary trauma can rob the past of its goodness, leaving one feeling as if the past is gone, dead, separated from the present. The vitalization of the present by the past or the past by the present requires that experiences be linked across time. These links are created, in both… CONTINUE READING
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