Philip M. Bromberg on Therapy as a Negotiation of Otherness

Sooner or later, “the shadow of the tsunami” [of unhealed developmental trauma] will be evoked, bringing with it an enacted reliving of the original relational context that led to its existence, and for more individuals than one might imagine, evoking an affective memory of sliding into the abyss of depersonalization — the edge of annihilation.

For all such patients, any apparent failure of their dissociative mental structure to do its “proper” job makes their highest priority the restoration of stability, which in therapy means, “keep your hands off my ability to put things out of my mind.”

A patient chooses to see a therapist because of an implied promise that she may become more able to live her life with well-being, spontaneity, and creativity, but most patients for whom developmental trauma is a big issue have already settled for relative stability through believing that “the only safe hands to be in are my own, and you are not me,” which is why the heart of therapy is about negotiation of otherness.

The therapist’s goal of helping them restore their right to exist as a whole person has to earn its place in the analytic relationship and, paradoxically, it is earned because of the patient’s misgivings, not in spite of them.

from Bromberg, P. M. (2011). The Shadow of the Tsunami: And the Growth of the Relational Mind (1st ed.). Taylor & Francis.