Réflexions sur la répétition du trauma dans le contre-transfert en clinique

Abstract

Traumatic experiences could weaken the psychosomatic organization of subjects and introduce the necessity of a psychic elaboration. However, to avoid displeasure, traumatized subjects often use unconsciously emotional repression instead of a creation of sense of the event (symbolization). So, psychologists can observe, sometimes several years later, that the violent affects could be reactivated during the meeting with a clinician by the way of projections or identifications. Or, the encounter with trauma could be as much invasive for the psychist as for the victim, due to the complexity of instinctual motions (from aggressiveness to identification with the aggressor, voyeurism temptation or seduction). This paper examines the destiny of these instinctual motions in psychological practice with people abused. Methods and subjectsWe present and discuss two clinical cases from our psychological practices, one in the field of child's protection, the other in the field of medically assisted procreation (MAP). ResultsAnalysis of the instinctual movements (include the aggressive ones) allows the psychologists to perceive and take into account the traumatic pain, often hidden or denied during the first encounter. The recognition of aggressiveness could permit to get out of the risk of sympathy (introducing a confusion of languages). It also allows the clinician to create a therapeutic alliance with the patient, not based on fascination about trauma but on the updating's possibilities of distress or violence, the re-experienciation of anger or frustration in secure emotional conditions allowed by the non-destructiveness of the clinician.