Where I Find Myself is Not Where I Am Supposed to Be. An Enquiry Into Trauma and Temporality With Reference to the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger
Keywords:
Trauma, complex trauma, temporality, Martin Heidegger, thrownness, therapy, phenomenology In accordance with the codes of ethics of UKCP and BACP, my client’s name and their identifying details have been changed in the following paper in order to preserve confidentiality. I am no longer one of them, however. They are up there, on the face of the earth, I am down here, in the bottom of a well. They possess the light, while I am in the process of losing it. […] With its mouldy smell and its trace of dampness, the air smells exactly as it did when I first climbed down inside. Down here there are no seasons. Not even time exists. (Murakami, 2003: p 392)Abstract
This paper explores from both a personal and philosophical perspective how traumatic experiences and complex, developmental trauma in particular, may impact on individuals’ perception of time and temporality. It argues that mainstream trauma interventions such as CBT and F-CBT are philosophically flawed and thus de-world and de-contextualize trauma and proposes the existential-phenomenological approach as an alternative.
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Published
2019-11-01
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Articles
