Neophobia, Ontological Insecurity, and Existential Choice Following Trauma

Abstract

This article offers a model for understanding the paradoxical behavior of adult survivors of child abuse. Reinforcement theory predicts AUTHORS' NOTE: We gratefully acknowledge Katharine Thompson and Gladys Patterson for their invaluable assistance in developing concepts and preparing this article. The concepts in this article were first publicly presented by Martin R. Smith and Marjorie K. TIoomim during a lecture entitled "The Psychology of Trauma and Shock" at the C.L.A.R.E. Foundation, Los Angeles, August 1986. that organisms will seek pleasure and avoid pain, yet adults abused in childhood continue in self-injurious and self-damaging patterns of behavior with no seeming regard for hedonic (feeling) consequences. This model proposes that, following chronic trauma, the neocortex loses its capacity to rationally evaluate and guide behavior and is relegated to simply ratifying a primitive form of rote, inflexible, subcortical mediation of behavior. The primary purpose of this subcortical meditation is to maintain a state of dissociation that keeps the mental, emotional, and behavioral aspects of early trauma from becoming conscious. This behavior is termed neophobic, derived from neophobia, meaning fear of the new. Subcortical mediation has an ontological reinforcement because it is concerned with the existential problem of making choices that seem to ensure survival even when the choices are irrational in terms of selfpreservation. The therapeutic requirements are to carefully and gently extinguish neophobic perseveration in dissociation, restore neocortical ability for rational choice making, and assist in mourning the loss of ontological well-being.