Abstract
Trauma experience is understood through its expression in language, with implications for psycholinguistic and clinical research and analysis. Clinical research approaches often approach childhood trauma through investigative, semi-structured, retrospective interviews (e.g. Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse, CECA). This facilitates the narration of abuse history for systematic analysis in relation to clinical disorder. Interview techniques assist such history-telling, for example by ‘scaffolding’ the account, aiding memory through chronological questioning, using a factual focus and using probing questions to collect detail and resolve inconsistencies. However, some personal narratives are fragmented, incomplete, contradictory or highly emotional/dissociated from emotion. This can be explained by trauma impacts such as being emotionally frozen (forgetting and avoidance) or overwhelmed (emotional over-remembering) and is termed ‘unresolved trauma’ with links to attachment vulnerability. These narratives can make investigative interview research more challenging but can offer opportunities for secondary psycholinguistic analysis. Illustrative interview quotes from CECA childhood physical and sexual abuse narratives of three women are provided with comment on style of reporting. The women had recurrent trauma experience and later life depression and anxiety. The interview responses are examined in terms of seven characteristics taken from available literature (e.g. incoherent, contradictory, lack recall, time lapses, emotionality, blame and vividness). The concept of unresolved loss is discussed and whether the linguistic characteristics are specific to a trauma or to an individual. Factual investigative interviews and psycholinguistic analysis of narrative may find ways of combining for greater depth of understanding of unresolved trauma, to extend available methods and aid therapy.
Highlights
There is increasing awareness that childhood trauma is a major public health issue (Felitti, 2002)
Extracts from Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse (CECA) interview transcripts are used here to illustrate some psycholinguistic characteristics of reporting trauma
Tone of voice is mentioned from the audiorecording but the main focus is on the transcribed verbal material
Summary
There is increasing awareness that childhood trauma is a major public health issue (Felitti, 2002). This is due both to its high prevalence (e.g.: 1 in 5 UK adults) (ONS, 2020) and its substantial relationship to later life clinical disorder (Infurna et al, 2016) and physical illness (Dong et al, 2004). The individual’s ability to communicate their experience is critical for determining facts about what occurred. This is important for optimising personal interpretations and resolution, such as occurs in narrative therapy (Neuner, Schauer, Klaschik, Karunakara, & Elbert, 2004)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
