NOVEMBER 2005, VOLUME 33, NUMBER 2, Abstract 5
Trauma Clients: How Understanding Disintegration Can Help to Restore Resourcefulness of the Self
Marek J. Celinski, Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, Ontario
Kathryn M. Gow, Queensland University of Technology
This article proposes that in order to conduct therapy with traumatized clients utilising hypnosis, the clinician must first understand trauma and its impact on the self schema, be aware of what a century of trauma theorists have been telling us, and then analyse the language of trauma, type of personality disintegration, resourcefulness, and potential for recovery in order to choose carefully how to communicate with traumatised clients, both within and without hypnosis/trance states. The authors present a model which embraces three consecutive components of the therapeutic process in post-trauma conditions; this begins with absorption of the trauma content and is followed by discovery of one’s autonomy and a need for self-development that should lead to broader use of the resourcefulness of the self (either pre-existing and underutilised or which requires yet to be learned or further developed). At the final stage, an individual who has suffered traumatic emotional disintegration is expected to achieve a secondary intergration based on discovered values and personality ideals. The Resourcefulness for Recovery Inventory (Celinski & Antoniazzi, 1999) is presented as a newly developed instrument which identifies initial strengths and weaknesses that may be utilised in working with trauma clients.