This is an introduction to the ideas of Peter Levine around trauma. It is good to keep in mind that he has a particular way of defining trauma operationally, and he then presents a theory of how trauma happens … basically that the animal/person goes into freeze state after fight or flight, but that instead of having a normal process of emmerging back into motion, the animal’s neo-cortex in effect circumvents the normal hindbrain processes and causes the animal to come back into motion. This then has the effect of leaving certain hindbrain directed processes and coordinations still dysfunctionally frozen, manifesting in what we observe in someone as “trauma”. …
He then describes a purely physical process of reintegrating the frozen hindbrain coordinations through attempting “completion” of the movement… not a unique idea to his work, but something that he spends a great deal of energy reseraching and coming to understandings of. A great advantage to this work is that it is not based on verbalized story… one doesn’t have to dredge up memories of what caused the problem, and thus avoids all of the pitfalls of this approach, including restimulating and reinforcing the trauma pattern, fabrication of false memories (1980s Recovered Memory Movement as well as certain aspects of the current resergence of “Encounter” practices), and difficulties dealing with people who can’t remember (like with amnesia nbased in brain trauma).
…
Memory, Trauma & Healing
by Peter Levine, Ph.D.
The brain’s function is to choose from the past, to diminish it, to simplify it, but not to preserve it.
– Henri Bergson
from The Creative Mind, 1911
…
Around 1900, the French philosopher Henri Bergson gleaned deep insights into the nature of memory that are just now being appreciated by contemporary researchers and clinicians. Bergson theorized that there are two fundamentally different forms of memory; one conscious, the other unconscious. Neuroscientist Daniel Schacter (1996), in a readable volume entitled Searching for Memory, describes his examination of a patient with a serious head injury. This man (called Mickey) had little memory of his recent experiences. Schacter asked Mickey a series of obscure questions such as ‘‘Who holds the worlds record for shaking hands’’ and ‘‘Where was the first baseball game played?’’ Not surprisingly, Mickey did not know the answers to these questions. Schacter then gave them to him. When asked the same questions twenty minutes later in another room, Mickey correctly answered Teddy Roosevelt and Hoboken, New Jersey, etc., to the trivia questions. However, he had no recollection of how he got this information and thought that perhaps it might have been from his sister. Although he had an implicit memory of his meeting with Schacter twenty minutes earlier, he had no explicit memory of it.
Similar observations and extensive experiments have been carried out by experimental psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists and clinicians, confirming that we humans have two distinctly different forms of memory; one explicit and conscious, the other implicit and unconscious. The description by Schacter of Mickey’s strange behavior illustrates the curious ‘‘dissociation’’ between the conscious and unconscious aspects of memory.
Of particular significance in working with and understanding trauma, is a form of implicit memory that is profoundly unconscious, and forms the basis for the imprint trauma leaves on the body/mind. The relationship between implicit and explicit aspects of an experience is an important dynamic in the resolution of trauma and in the question of false memory.
Memory as Procedure
The type of memory utilized in learning most physical activities (walking, riding a bike, skiing, etc.) is a form of implicit memory called ‘‘procedural memory.’’ Procedural or ‘‘body memories’’ are learned sequences of coordinated ‘‘motor acts’’ chained together into meaningful actions. You may not remember explicitly how and when you learned them, but, at the appropriate moment (like Mickey’s trivia knowledge), they are (implicitly) ‘‘recalled’’ and mobilized (acted out) simultaneously. These ‘‘motoric memories’’ (action patterns) are formed and orchestrated largely by involuntary structures in the cerebellum and basal ganglia.
Procedures are primarily non-conscious, and attempts at conscious learning are generally counter-productive. Imagine trying to learn how to ride a bicycle, ski or have sex from written instructions. It cannot be done. A book may point you in the direction of where to begin, but the learning occurs through instinct, trial and error.
Trauma is about procedures the organism executes when exposed to overwhelming stress, threat and injury. The failure to neutralize these implicit procedures and restore homeostasis is at the basis for the maladaptive and debilitating symptoms of trauma.
Completion and Remembering
Acts must be carried out to their completion. Whatever their point of departure, the end will be beautiful. It is (only) because an action has not been completed that it is vile.
– Jean Genet, from Thief’s Journal
In response to threat and injury, animals, including humans, execute biologically based, non-conscious action patterns that prepare them to meet the threat and defend themselves. The very structure of trauma, including activation, dissociation, and freezing are based on the evolution of reptilian, mammalian and primate predator/prey survival behaviors. When threatened or injured, organisms draw from a ‘‘library’’ of possible motoric responses supported by adjustments in the autonomic and visceral nervous systems. In response to threat and injury we orient, dodge, duck, stiffen, brace, retract, fight, flee, freeze, collapse, etc. All of these coordinated responses are somatically based-they are things that the body does to protect and defend itself. It is when these orienting and defending responses are overwhelmed that we see trauma.
The bodies of traumatized people portray ‘‘snapshots’’ of their unsuccessful attempts to defend themselves in the face of threat and injury. It is because they have been overwhelmed that the execution of their normally continuous responses to threat have become truncated. Trauma is fundamentally a highly activated incomplete biological response to threat, frozen in time. For example, when our full neuromuscular and metabolic machinery prepares us to fight or to flee, muscles throughout the entire body are tensed in specific patterns of high energy readiness. When we are unable to complete the appropriate actions and discharge the tremendous energy generated by our survival preparations, this energy becomes fixated into specific patterns of neuromuscular readiness. Afferent feedback to the brain stem generated from these incomplete neuromuscular/ autonomic responses maintains a state of acute and then chronic arousal and dysfunction in the central nervous system. Traumatized people are not suffering from a disease in the normal sense of the word. They have become fixated in an aroused state. It is difficult (if not impossible) to function normally under these circumstances.
Residual incomplete responses (the ‘‘snapshots’’ of unsuccessful attempts at defense) are the basis of (implicit) traumatic memory. Just as Mickey was unable to remember the source of his trivia information, trauma is not ‘‘remembered’’ in an explicit, conscious form. It is coded as implicit procedures based on biological survival reactions. These incomplete procedures seek completion and integration, not (explicit) remembering. The compulsion that so many trauma survivors have to ‘‘remember’’ is often a misinterpretation of the profound urge to complete the highly charged survival responses that were aborted or truncated at the time they were overwhelmed. This is a significant factor in the genesis of spurious memory.
In an attempt to rationalize their highly activated (incomplete) survival responses, traumatized people will often create explicit stories that energetically match their internal experience . These ‘‘memories’’ may be accurate only in the sense that they are metaphors for what is stored implicitly. Many survivors of trauma need an ‘‘explanation’’ for their disturbing internal states. For example, I have worked with numerous people who came to me fairly certain that they had been molested or raped as children. In many cases the people were correct, but not in all of them. Several clients had created interpretations that seemed to explain their symptoms, but, in fact, they had been traumatized by early childhood surgical procedures. To a child, a frightening surgical procedure can be experienced very much like a rape.
Whether you can remember a traumatic event explicitly is not highly significant for healing to take place. Trauma is implicit. What is significant in the resolution of trauma is the completion of incomplete responses to threat and the ensuing discharge of the energy that was mobilized for survival. When the implicit (procedural) memory is activated and completed somatically, an explicit narrative can be constructed; not the other way around. In this way, survivors can begin to re-member, i.e., to associate the dissociated aspects of their body experience and thaw the frozen energy that is at the core of their trauma. In doing this, they begin to integrate implicit experience into coherent conscious narratives. These stories are neither true nor false. They contain a balance of elements, some of which are historically accurate, some are symbolic of feeling states, while the primary function of others is to promote the healing process.
Jody…
Focusing on body sensations, Jody slowly became aware of various tension patterns in her head and neck region. With this focus on the ‘‘felt sense,’’ she began to notice a particular (internal-kinesthetic) urge to turn and retract her neck. In allowing this ‘‘intention’’ to execute as slow gradual ‘‘micro movements’’ she experienced a momentary fear, followed by a strong tingling sensation.
By allowing these involuntary ‘‘intentional movements’’ to emerge and ‘‘gradually’’ to complete, Jody began a journey into and beyond the deeply unconscious implicit ‘‘memory traces’’ of her traumatic assault. In learning to move within a dynamic tension between flexible control and surrender to these involuntary movements, she began to experience gentle shaking and trembling throughout her body. Thus began, ever so gently, the discharge of her truncated energy (not from explicit memory-she had none at this time). Jody’s implicit memory was leading her home.
In later sessions, her head would turn away, while her arms and hands moved slowly upward and outward in a protective stance. These spontaneous movements were sometimes accompanied by brief animal-like shrieks almost identical to the distress calls recorded in species as diverse as birds and monkeys. She then felt the impulse in her legs to run, followed by more aggressive postures. She bared her teeth slowly, and, using her hands as if they were claws, experienced the urge to strike back at her assailant. Jody then became aware of (vestibular) sensations of falling. She felt the impact of the fall, followed by sensations of pain and bruising on the front and back of her head.
By completing these various defensive, distress and orienting responses, Jody was able to construct a sense of how she (her body) prepared to react in that fraction of a second when she was attacked. She became aware of head pulling back and away, a flash of the rifle butt coming toward her, her hands and arms moving upwards, the frozen impulse to run and the sense of running, the deep sense of fighting (trembling), the smash on her head, a quick whiff of the assailant’s peculiar odor-then, the fall forward onto her face and the repeated blows to the back of her head. In being able to stretch out, in time, this highly impacted shock imprint, she not only implicitly ‘‘remembered’’ the event, but began to experience deep organic discharge and her body’s innate capacity to defend and protect itself. In moving ahead in time from where it had been arrested twenty-five years ago, Jody proceeded gradually toward the restoration of her shattered self.
In the Theater of the Body
While explicit memory is accessed primarily through cognition, implicit memory must be reached through the body. The ‘‘felt sense,’’ as Gendlin calls it, (though we use it daily) is relatively undeveloped in most ‘‘post-industrial’’ adults. This ‘‘felt sense’’ is made up of kinesthetic, proprioceptive, vestibular and visceral (autonomic) information channels. Afferent flow enters the brain stem as non-conscious (instinctual) information, and is then elaborated upon by the limbic (emotional) and neo-cortical (cognitive) brain structures. Through the felt sense, interoceptive information (which forms the unconscious background of all experience), can be integrated and brought into a conscious figure.
Jody, through her felt sense, was able to extract the ‘‘intention’’ signal to move her head from the background noise of random tension. To reiterate; intentional movement is non-conscious – it is experienced as if the body was moving on its own volition, not by conscious effort. By following these intentional impulses, various spontaneous (but organized) micro-movements were initiated. This was accomplished by the discharge of the incomplete survival response in the form of gentle shaking and trembling movements, along with beads of cold, then warm perspiration.
Jody was becoming deeply resourced by her biological capacity to defend herself, as well as by the discharge of energy and her new-found ability to move between conscious control and surrender to the realm of involuntary sensation. In that fraction of a second, when the madman raised his rifle, Jody’s primitive body/mind oriented and sorted hastily through the possible defensive procedures available to her. Although she did not get to execute most of these implicit procedures at that time, her body had been energetically prepared to do so. In completing these life preserving actions twenty-five years later, she released that bound energy and added to her resources the felt realization that she had, in fact, attempted to defend herself.
…