TAJ October 2008 Abstracts

Transactional Analysis Holds Promise for Healing Trauma and Building Resilience at a Societal Level
Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge
pp. 269-272
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This article is an edited version of the opening address given by Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, MP, to the World Transactional Analysis Conference on 7 August 2008 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Madlala-Routledge, a Quaker, served as Deputy Minister of Defense and then Deputy Minister of Health before being dismissed by President Thabo Mbeki for her outspoken views about HIV/AIDS. She is currently Deputy Speaker of Parliament under recently elected President Kgalema Motlanthe. In this article Madlala-Routledge reflects on the traumatic past of South Africa and the need for personal and social healing and welcomes the role that transactional analysis could play in contributing to that process. She also looks at the importance of social and psychological factors in the health of individuals and societies and the need for an integrative approach such as the one transactional analysis might provide.

An Ethnopsychiatric Approach to Healing Trauma in Involuntary Immigrants and Torture Victims: A Clinical Case
Cristina Caizzi and Simona Ciambellini
pp. 273-284

When purposefully and repeatedly inflicted wounds remain invisible, they are even more devastating. A person who is tortured is annihilated to the point that personal, social, and cultural differences are no longer relevant. That is the goal of torture. This article describes psychotherapy with involuntary immigrants, some of them victims of torture, as part of the project "Invisible Wounds" in the Caritas Diocese of Rome. The project's goal is to recognize, welcome, heal, and offer these persons the opportunity to rediscover themselves as individuals who are entitled to fulfilling lives. A case example demonstrates the therapy process, from diagnosis through a comprehensive analysis of the treatment phases, according to transactional analysis constructs. The carefully constructed context, work groups, and social network in which this work is carried out is described.

Trauma and Migration: A Transactional Analytic Approach toward Refugees and Torture Victims
Marco Mazzetti
pp. 285-302

This article presents a model for interpreting migration, a phenomenon that involves the relocation of a large group of people from their homeland and native culture to another place, an event that is usually experienced as traumatic. The author describes factors of resilience and vulnerability that affect the psychic health of immigrants and, in particular, the effects that these have on refugee populations. Due to the events that determined their migration, refugees are particularly at risk for psychotraumatological pathologies, and migration can have a retraumatizing effect. The specific psychopathological problems of traumatized refugees-in particular, those who have survived torture-are described from a transactional analytic perspective along with indications for the psychosocial management of their difficulties.

Integrating Neurological Findings with Transactional Analysis in Trauma Work: Linking "There and Then" Self States with "Here and Now" Ego States
Edward T. Novak
pp. 303-319

Advances in neuroscience continue to expand our understanding of brain functions and responses during and after traumatic experiences. Memories of trauma are encoded primarily within the fight, flight, or freeze reflexive areas of the brain and play out in affect rather than cognition. This article provides an overview of recent neuroscientific research and uses this to explain the impact trauma has on both therapist and client when addressing trauma in psychotherapy.

Working with Trauma: A Case Study
Laurie Weiss
pp. 320-323

The case study presented in this article demonstrates how a middle-aged survivor of repeated extreme child abuse reintegrated a split between her memories of abuse and the feelings associated with those memories. The client's self-created therapeutic process of sculpting the early abuse scenes in clay and the impact of this work on others is described. The article further addresses balancing the need to communicate the horror of child abuse with protecting the audience from unnecessary traumatization.

Trauma and Resilience in Women Diagnosed with Breast Cancer: A Transactional Analysis Perspective
Elvin Aydin
pp. 323-334

This articles describes a phenomenological study done with patients from the Breast Unit at Marmara University Hospital in Istanbul, Turkey, to gain understanding of the psychology of women with breast cancer. In addition, the study aimed to provide a different perspective as to why existing psychological studies on breast cancer yield contradictory or inconsistent outcomes. The Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method (Wengraf, 2001) was used, and the analysis of interviews with four women with invasive ductal carcinoma suggested that they shared six characteristics and a sequence of four life stressors at predictable intervals from childhood to adulthood, the fourth being the trauma of being diagnosed with breast cancer. Psychoanalytic and relational transactional analytic perspectives offer a possible explanation for these findings and a clinical framework for treating women with breast cancer. Consideration is given to the advantages and limitations of this kind of study.

Using Transactional Analysis to Understand and Heal the Effects of Bullying in Children
Nathalie Goursolas Bogren
pp. 335-342

Bullying is often discounted because it is linked with fear of violence and fear of judgment for allowing such behavior to occur. This article defines bullying in transactional analytic terms, presents the script of a bullied child, and outlines the stages of intervention used to help bullied children and their families.

What Motivates Resilience After Trauma?
Fanita English
pp. 343-351

The author presents her view that resilience following trauma can only occur when three unconscious internal motivators (Survia, Passia, and Transcia) take turns or rotate in affecting our attitudes, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors through our ego states. Survia is concerned with personal survival, Passia with the survival of our species by supporting creativity, and Transcia with our need to sleep and to transcend everyday reality. Typical attributes of each motivator are listed, and a diagram depicts the relationship of motivators to ego states. Using examples drawn from her own and others' experience, the author discusses how, for someone who has suffered trauma, Survia may become overly dominant and the smooth rotation of motivators is thus impeded. When attributes pertaining to Passia are stimulated, rotation of motivators and consequent emotional balance are resumed and resilience becomes possible.

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