Discussion of Dr. Russell Carr's Presentation on Plenary 2:
"Psychoanalysis and Combat Trauma: The Analysis of a War-Torn Soldier"

I began my discussion of Dr. Russell Carr's powerfully moving presentation by confiding that like Russ, combat is also personal for me. I explained that my brother, Michael, had served as a "tunnel rat" in the 1968 Tet offensive during the Vietnam war. I mentioned that striking similarities between Russ's account of Major B's experiences and my brother's brought back painful memories for me. I described the devastating effects of combat on my brother and his painful struggle to return to civilian life.

After noting that Russ's has succeeded magnificently in showing how Bob Stolorow's "phenomenological, contextualist approach to trauma" can lead to "the bearing of guilt, shame and finitude between two human beings in a therapeutic relationship," I expressed my regret that Russ had not been there to help my brother.

I then acknowledged my own indebtedness to Bob as my teacher, dissertation adviser and supervisor. I mentioned that at the same time that Bob was writing Trauma and Human Existence, I was working on my book, Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty: Trauma-Centered Psychoanalysis. I noted that while my own ideas about trauma have their origins in Bob's writing, there are some significant differences. In the remainder of my presentation, I outlined our differences and showed how my approach applied to Russ's work with Major B.

I suggested that the most devastating effect of trauma is the loss of our relational world. According to my way of thinking, trauma, by destroying the certainties that pattern psychological life, exposes us to the unbearable uncertainty that others will be available for the relational exchange on which a sense of differentiated selfhood is based. I contend that in trauma, a previously unquestioned sense of "going-on-being," to use Winnicott's (1965) felicitous phrase, is lost.

My view of trauma makes use of Kohut's assertion that what we dread most is not death as an abstraction, but the irrecoverable loss of our connections to those who supply the emotional sustenance on which our very selfhood depends. In contrast to Bob who sees trauma as shattering "the absolutisms of everyday life. . . that evade and cover up the finitude, contingency and embeddedness of our existence and the indefiniteness of its certain extinction," I see the shattering of the absolutisms of everyday life as an expression of the destruction of what I call the "systemically emergent certainties" (or SECs) that organize psychological life. SECs are another way of thinking about what Bob and his collaborators call "organizing principles. " I prefer to use the term systemically emergent certainties or SECs rather than organizing principles because it conveys that the themes that structure selfhood (1) form within and affect the overlapping systems that comprise our relational world; (2) specify the conditions under which we believe our relationships are subject to the orderly mutual influence necessary to sustain selfhood; and (3) tend to be experienced as unquestionable true.

As an example, I suggested that one of Major B's pre-combat SECs involved his belief that as a member of the Air Force, he would be able to trust himself to kill when it was necessary for him to do so and to refrain from killing when it was not. Upon realizing that he had followed orders to kill terrified teenagers when "it didn't make a difference to U.S. security" and that he killed them without feeling remorse at the time, this SEC was destroyed. Another SEC involved the belief that the government was a responsible caring organization deserving of his sacrifice. This was destroyed when he learned that his nine-month wait for a medical retirement had been in vain because his doctors had not even completed the necessary paper work.

One benefit of understanding that trauma involves the destruction of systemically emergent certainties is that the dichotomization of adult-onset trauma and developmental trauma becomes unnecessary. While I don't think of childhood experiences, no matter how traumatizing, as causing combat trauma, or of taking precedence over adult experiences, I do think of them as contributing to the SECs that are destroyed in trauma.

Although my understanding of trauma has undergone many changes since my first attempts to write about it, one idea that I think still holds up well is the notion that trauma not only involves a shattering experience, but also efforts at self restoration. Going out to bars to numb himself with alcohol, inciting violence toward himself, contemplating suicide, as well as volunteering in "Wounded Warriors" probably all represent Major B's efforts at self restoration, although some are clearly maladaptive.

Russ alluded to Bob's understanding of trauma as involving unbearable affect. I noted that one of the reasons that affect often seems unbearable in the context of trauma is that the destruction of SECs is likely to generate many complex, sometimes contradictory affects, for which, as Bob has pointed out, there is no "relational home." When uncertainty needs to be reduced at all cost, such complexity cannot be tolerated. I have conceptualized dissociation in terms of efforts to reduce the complexity of affective experience in the aftermath of trauma.

I suggested that trauma not only individualizes us, it also threatens to erase our individuality. Levinas (1947/1999, p. 35) argues that, "Horror is nowise an anxiety about death . . . in horror a subject is stripped of his subjectivity, of his power to have private existence." I contend that the horror of trauma lies in its capacity to strip us of our subjective sense of private existence. The experience of being a unique, irreplaceable individual emerges out of the relational exchange. When trauma destroys one's sense of certainty about the availability of that exchange, the loss of one's distinct personhood looms threateningly. Just to acknowledge one's membership in the group of combat veterans who suffer from PTSD, or any other diagnostic category for that matter, may reinforce a sense that one's individuality has been compromised.

I then spoke of my appreciation for the fact that Russ had addressed both a combat veteran's sense of excruciating singularity and his dread that his individuality has been erased. Russ tolds us that he tried to provide a relational home for Major B in which he could feel a sense of twinship, a sense of being "siblings in the same darkness." He did so, in part, by courageously acknowledging his own struggle with devastating combat trauma. At the same time, by dedicating himself to understanding Major B's "subjective experience of the world" without blurring the ways in which Major B's vulnerabilities, strengths, and restorative efforts were different from his own, Russ honored Major B's uniqueness as an individual.

I ended by saying that I felt very grateful for the opportunity to find solace and healing in Bob's and Russ's company as I revisited my own confrontations with finitude during the traumatic time of my brother's combat duty in Vietnam.