Feeling, Relating, Existing

For both Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the purpose of philosophical concepts is to point us toward the path of transformation rather than to explain. Both philosophers seek to expose the illusions, sedimented in linguistic practices, that cover up our finitude and context-embeddedness.

The enormity and everlastingness of the grief following a traumatic loss are not manifestations of psychopathology; they are a measure of the depth of love for the lost beloved.

My aim is to show how Heidegger's existential philosophy enriches contemporary psychoanalysis and how contemporary psychoanalysis enriches Heidegger's existential philosophy.

Throughout the rest of their lives, those who have been traumatized encounter what I call “portkeys” that transport them again and again back to the original experiences of trauma, so that time is felt to be circular rather than linear.

It is from the horror of the doomsday scenario posed by climate change that the minimizers and scoffers turn away. Ironically, in turning away from the extreme dangers of climate change, we contribute to the coming to be of the horrifying catastrophe we are evading. We must face up to our apocalyptic anxiety before it is too late for the survival of future generations.

Denise Levertov’s poem, “Talking to Grief,” captures beautifully the process whereby grief (and other traumatic emotions), in finding a welcoming home in which to dwell, can become truly one’s own—i.e., can become seamlessly and constitutively woven into the fabric of whom one experiences oneself as being.

The valorization of shame in the name of social awareness and socialization is all too often a rationalization for emotionally abusing young children.

In feeling ashamed we feel exposed as inherently flawed or defective before the gaze of a viewing, judging other. In shame, we are held hostage by the eyes of others; we belong, not to ourselves, but to them. In that sense, shame is indicative of an inauthentic or unowned way of existing.

"Death takes from us not only some particular life within the world, some moment that belongs to us, but, each time, without limit, someone through whom the world, and first of all our own world, will have opened up."

Experiences of emotional trauma become freeze-framed into an eternal present in which we remain forever trapped, or to which we are condemned to be perpetually returned through the portkeys supplied by life’s slings and arrows.

Although the possibility of emotional trauma is ever present, so too is the possibility of forming bonds of deep emotional understanding within which the devastating emotional pain built in to our finite human existing can be held, endured, and eventually integrated.

Trauma

On Being a Remainder

Robert D Stolorow Ph.D. on September 7, 2013

Being the remainder of an emotional world shattered by trauma is a source of the uncanny sense of estrangement and isolation from the world of everydayness that is experienced by traumatized persons.

Being the remainder of an emotional world shattered by trauma is a source of the uncanny sense of estrangement and isolation from the world of everydayness that is experienced by traumatized persons.

"Every generation of poets and thinkers attempts to make sense of the enigmatic, unfathomable face of life, with its laughing mouth and mournful eyes. This will remain an unending task."—Wilhelm Dilthey

When we dwell with others’ unendurable pain, their shattered emotional worlds are enabled to shine with a kind of sacredness that calls forth an understanding and caring engagement within which traumatized states can be gradually transformed into bearable painful feelings.

It is my view that the lamentable, endlessly recurring cycle of atrocity and counter-atrocity that has been so characteristic of human history derives significantly from the turning to metaphysical illusion in the effort to evade the tragedy of human finitude.

A tragedy like the shooting spree at and near Santa Monica College brings us face-to-face with our existential vulnerabilities—vulnerabilities to harm, death, and loss—and the existential vulnerability of all those we love and, perhaps worst of all, the limitedness of our ability to protect them.

William Shakespeare well understood the importance of bringing grief into language.

The Boston Marathon bombing is a collective trauma for all of us, bringing us face-to-face with our existential vulnerabilities—vulnerabilities to harm, death, and loss—and the existential vulnerability of all those we love and, perhaps worst of all, the limitedness or our ability to protect them.

Like its analogue, “secure attachment,” "trauma recovery” is an oxymoron—human finitude with its traumatizing impact is not an illness from which one can or should recover. A felt requirement to recover from, or become immune to, the circling back to emotional trauma can be a source of intense shame and self-loathing when, inevitably, it cannot be achieved.

When we dwell with others’ unendurable pain, their shattered emotional worlds are enabled to shine with a kind of sacredness that calls forth an understanding and caring engagement within which traumatized states can be gradually transformed into bearable painful feelings. We must not turn away.