Effects . of . Infancy . Trauma

Infancy trauma is not confined to the children of a few bad parents ; it occurs to most of humanity in some degree and has shaped the course of human evolution. Trauma due to physical abuse is perhaps not the most common kind. I consider that trauma due to the mistaken interpretation of unpleasant emotional experience is the most prevalent kind, and it is this kind that I focus on in my articles. This kind is one of the sources of the intellectual and artistic ideas that have been important to mankind. [¹]

There are five major effects of infancy trauma. The first three effects modify and even transform the person’s character. And the last one shapes the person's sexual identity.

1). Infancy trauma creates the two identities.
I split consciousness up into two factors, that of social identity and that of individual identity. Having two separate identities generates confusion ; usually the person will prefer one to the other. But once confusion is removed then he / she finds that they can be either an individual or socially-centred as the needs of the moment dictate. Infancy trauma is assimilated when the person has learned to balance the two identities. [²]

2). Infancy trauma also bestows depth and intensity to consciousness.
This effect is in proportion to its severity. This is the effect that enhances the production of intellectual and artistic ideas. A person who experienced little or no infancy trauma is likely to be an emotionally-balanced adult, but with little intensity to their character ; they will have little ability to understand the needs of other people. In general, it is only extreme sorrow, whatever its cause, that deepens consciousness. And there are few sorrows more extreme than infancy trauma.

3). The degree of severity of trauma in the infant can affect the degree of severity of abreaction in the adult.
If the child manages to contain trauma by establishing the processes of identification and self-absorption, then abreaction will be no worse than usual (the trauma remains at a subconscious level of mind). [³]. But if in the adult these processes break down enough for episodes of madness to occur then life stays unpleasant even when normality is restored. (Most forms of madness have their roots in the child's traumatic interpretations of experience).
Once madness erupts into normal consciousness then the person’s psychic pain threshold decreases (psychic pain is the kind of pain produced by negative psychological states such as depression). Trauma, when it rises up within normal consciousness sufficiently to cause madness, sensitises the person to psychic pain. From now on the pain of abreaction escalates to the point where little of lasting value can be attained in life – the need to avoid the backlash of abreactive hatred becomes greater than the need to achieve.

4). The person acquires the sensitivity to explore the hidden aspects of mind.
Ths effect follows on from the third one. The increased degree of sensitivity to psychic pain that is created by trauma enables a person to use the method of psycho-analysis to probe very deeply into the workings of the subconscious mind. The more psychic pain that a person has experienced in life, so the more deeply he / she can penetrate into the subconscious and unconscious minds. Extreme distress can bring extreme awareness. However, he / she also needs strong will power, an ethical idealism and a dominant sense of survival. Hence psychoanalysis is not for everyone. [4]

5). Another effect is the construction of the Oedipus complex.
I summarise my ideas for the period in life when the infant is trying to create its ego (from about seven months of age onwards). The infant assumes that the mother’s subconscious hatred is the mother’s feeling towards itself. It experiences self-hate, which is then turned into guilt. It escapes from the guilt by developing identification with the mother – it changes self-hate into love, but this love is the love mode of jealousy. Jealousy follows guilt. [5]

Hence the sequence is :

Self-hate

guilt

identification

jealousy.

The mother had already imprinted her pattern of sexuality on the child. So the child ties his jealousy to the mother’s sexual feelings ; hence his image of her always has a sexual component. [6]

Through the stratagem of identification he ties his will to the mother’s use of will ; this is his means of stabilising his own will. The greater the effect of infancy trauma, the greater is the emotional attachment of identification.

Finally, when he has become an adolescent he experiences sexual transference in social situations when anxiety acts on his jealousy. [7]. The sequence is continued as :

jealousy + anxiety sexual transference

The complete reaction from guilt to transference is the Oedipus complex, as it relates to the boy-mother relationship. The factor of identification within the complex generates intense emotions. The man will now find that for sustained passionate and intense sexual relationships to occur, his female partner needs to have traits of personality that are similar to those of his mother.

[ The only other way of generating intensity within sexual relationships is when they are based on the desire for power : the person uses sexuality to control and dominate the partner].

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it. The addresses of my websites are on the Links page.

[¹]. Infancy trauma is my name for psychological trauma that occurs in the first years of childhood. An article on Bonding focuses on some problems of a sensitive child and explains an unintentional source of infancy trauma.
In more detail, see the article Infancy Trauma. [1]

[²]. For my ideas on social identity and individual identity, see the article Two Identities.
There is also a section on the two identities in the article on Confusion, on my websites Discover Your Mind and The Strange World of Emotion. [2]

[³]. My in-depth analysis of the process of abreaction is given in the five articles on Abreaction. See home page.
For an analysis of identification and self- absorption, see the article Identification and Self-absorption. [3]

[4]. There is an article on Sensitivity and Effects of Fear on my website Discover Your Mind. [4]

[5]. My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions are given in the three articles on Emotion. See home page.
There is an article Oedipus and Electra on my website The Strange World of Emotion.
The time period for the construction of the child's ego is described in the article Creating the Ego on my website Discover Your Mind. [5]

[6]. Imprinting is described in the article on Transference. [6]

[7]. Anxiety is an emotion. See footnote 5. [7]

The articles in this section are :

Two Identities

Effects of Infancy Trauma

Need for a Stable Identity

Diagrammes

Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved

The copyright is mine, and the article is free to use. It can be reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.

Ian Heath, London UK

http://members.freezone.co.uk/ian-heath/

My email address is likely to change,
so if you want to write to me, go to the Home page
and use the address at the bottom.