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weapon. Still, Freud's reconstruction of the famous Wolf Man's trauma as
due to having witnessed parental intercourse, Arlow stated, left out other
possible causes-his own illnesses, the mental states of his parents and sis–
ter, and having seen animals have intercourse and be castrated.
In
other
words, the Wolf Man's trauma could have originated in any or many of
these scenes. Because parental sex life
per se
is not necessarily traumatic
unless accompanied by other upsets, some individuals may master seeming–
ly unbearable assaults that don't touch others: "one person's mouse may be
another person's dragon."
In
some, such events may lead to experience, in
others to symptoms. Arlow offered two examples: a female patient who had
three sets of traumatic experiences-preoedipal (related to toilet training),
oedipal (related to parental intercourse), and a loveless marriage; and a male
one (he had made it from rags to riches) who throughout his life was
searching for his true (dead) father. He noted that in each case the trauma
exacerbated previous conflicts, and was played out via unconscious fantasies
that erupted when triggered by a subsequent event. Consequently, treat–
ment must depend on understanding what originally caused the illness.
Robert Michels, known among his colleagues at Columbia University
and by the international psychoanalytic community as the most amusing
and incisive commentator, reminded us that seduction and trauma are not
equivalent; that whereas seduction relates to a potential response trauma is
negative-although traumatic seduction is more complex-and implies
something for which the organism is not pre-adapted. Nevertheless, trau–
ma and environment are not the same, even though as one moves away
from extraordinary to everyday trauma, the potential for growth increases.
He noted that Dowling asks how we separate splitting and symptom for–
mation from screen memory, but does not come to grips with the
differences between what impacts on the developing nervous system rather
than on minds that are capable of fantasy. Michels then wondered whether
Lionells would have understood her patient differently
if
they had worked
through the ini tial transference-countertransference ins tead of exploring
his memories. He is even more skeptical of Ornstein's "parent blaming,"
because even after knowing the patient's memory or fantasy, we still don't
know what really happened. Michels doubts that "in recovering these
memories, the traumatic aspects of the caretaker's personalities become
progressively clarified," and asks whether it follows from her self-psycho–
logical viewpoint that other approaches might be re-traumatizing an
already traumatiZed patient. Michels faulted Arlow's presentation only for
having failed to account for specific etiology. He concluded that everyday
seduction may even develop the capacity for adaptation and thus not be
traumatic, and if traumatic it then is not of the everyday variety.
Ultimately, these panelists reluctantly agreed that neither analyst nor
