Traumatised and Non-Traumatised States of the Personality

This book offers an original conception of trauma and of the working mind that has not been previously presented. It is mostly based on essentials taken from Bion's contributions. All human beings are fatalistically marked by the presence and eventual disappearance of primary part-objects. Many of these 'presence-absences' are temporary events, but others will overcome Freud's "protective shield" and become permanent, amounting to an enduring distress or "pre-conceptual trauma". Like the Mad Hatter's teatime in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, pre-conceptual traumas become an eternal 'now' that are continuously projected everywhere. They structure the specific idiosyncrasy of every human and split the mind in two opposite states, the traumatized and the non-traumatized. Tentatively, the spirit and fundamental nature of the absolute ubiquity and meaning of pre-conceptual traumas could be forumulated as being diachronically structured in terms of a narrative of conjoined presences of absences, ones which stand for highly toxic and emotionally organised 'parasites' that inhabit the unconscious mind from very early, and which feed on time and space, inhibit processes of symbolization, are projected everywhere, and reproduce themselves incessantly. They thereby determine not only all forms of psychopathology, but also the idiosyncrasy of every existing individual.