What Becomes of Infantile Traumatic Memories?: An Adult “Wild Child” Is Asked to Remember

Abstract

A severely traumatized child, acting like a wild animal, was removed from her parents at thirteen months of age when her three-week-old sister was found, bitten and shaken to death. (Her father was later convicted of manslaughter and imprisoned.) The older child was also covered with bite marks. When she was twenty-nine months old, this child, whom I call "Cammie," was brought to me from miles away by herfoster parents for once-monthly psychotherapy. I have treated her, stressing abreaction, context, and correction, once a month ever since. When she was five years old Cammie's foster family adopted her. She is now twenty-two. I call her the "wild child" because of the growly voice, vomiting at will, grabbing at the genitalia of strangers, and cruelties to animals that she exhibited after her rescue. Presently she attends college and is training to be a preschool teacher or an aide to pediatricians. I have taken notes on what Cammie says and does during the twenty years she has come to me. In the spring of 2011, I was asked to speak later that year about infantile memories at the Margaret Mahler Symposium, Columbia University, New York. With the organizing committee's approval, I accompanied Cammie and her adoptive mother to the October 1, 2011, meeting and asked her in front of the psychoanalytic audience to recount her oldest remembrances. She, her mother, and I spoke about the nonverbal manifestations of her memory as well. I had briefly prepared Cammie and her mother for our presentation at the Mahler Symposium, but for the most part, it was spontaneous and unrehearsed. Their comments are quoted in this article. At twenty-two the "wild child" reports no verbal memory from her first year. On the other hand, her behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions over the years have reflected what occurred to her and indicate very active nonverbal memories of the traumatic experiences. Fragments of verbal memory that she recounted in therapy between ages two and three have entirely slipped away. Several kinds of behavioral reenactments of the abuses she received as an infant have been reversed into altruism. Other attitudes and behaviors have remained unaltered, however. Under the influence of street drugs or anesthetics, her infantile memories have been reawakened in the form of illusions, delusions, and condensation. Following a disaster in Japan, a shard of infantile memory was retrieved in the form of a repeated nightmare. Single cases like Cammie's inform us about the course of traumatic memories through childhood. Such cases may lead us to follow larger groups of infants for extended periods of time. We must try to further understand the effects of early trauma on the brains and minds of young children. This is of crucial importance to the future of psychiatry and psychoanalysis and to our duties to society.