Trauma and Symbol

With the help of the concepts of Jung, Amati and Bleger, the loss of instinct and reality by victims of incestuous violence is described as an extreme regression onto a philogenetically primary and undifferentiated state of “ambiguity” and “identity”. Based on the therapeutic work with a woman sexually violated as a child, whose daughter also was incestuously traumatized, it is shown how by furthering symbolic processes, the blocking of emotional differenciation by a petrifying state of identity with the aggressor and also by the autoaggressive attempt to find meaning and identity in self-sacrifice can be abandoned.