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Life Arts    H4'ed 11/4/17  

You Are Suffering from Complex PTSD (REVIEW ESSAY)

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Thomas Farrell
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(12) Self-Esteem

(13) Self-Confidence

By toxic shame (John Bradshaw's term), Pete Walker means blame from others turned inward against oneself (Erik Erikson's formulation; page 181).

For a more technical clinical listing of defining characteristics of Cptsd, Pete Walker (page 3) refers the interested reader to page 121 of the psychiatrist Judith Herman's seminal book Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence -- From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (1992; 2nd ed., 2015). (In an email message to me dated November 2, 2017, the psychiatrist Justin A. Frank, M.D., the author of Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (2004; 2nd ed., 2007) and Obama on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (2011), says that a teacher of his and of Dr. Herman at the Harvard Medical School, the late psychiatrist Peter Sifneos, M.D. (1920-2008), may have first used the term complex PTSD.)

PTSD typically involves flashbacks that have a visual component. But Pete Walker says that the emotional flashbacks of Cptsd typically do not have a visual component (pages 3 and 145).

Arguably Pete Walker's greatest contribution to our understanding of Cptsd is his articulation of the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses -- and of certain hybrid combinations of these responses. He delineates each of these four response patterns in the terminology of attachment theory. In terms of attachment theory, each response has certain identifiable positive characteristics (see page 106).

It strikes me that the positive characteristics that Pete Walker identifies for each of the four response patterns are aligned with the optimal forms of the four archetypes of the mature masculine that the late Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette identify in their book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine (1990). (Girls and women have four corresponding feminine archetypes of maturity.)

Pete Walker lists five positive characteristics of the fight response pattern (page 106) that strike me as aligned with the optimal form of the King archetype of maturity in men and with the optimal form of the Queen archetype of maturity in women:

(1) Assertiveness

(2) Boundaries

(3) Courage

(4) Moxie

(5) Leadership

Concerning courage, Pete Walker says, "bravery is, in my opinion, defined by fear. It is taking [the] right action despite being afraid. It is not brave to do things that are not scary (page 78). See John Bradshaw's book Reclaiming Virtue: How We Can Develop the Moral Intelligence to Do the Right Thing at the Right Time for the Right Reason (2009). As Bradshaw acknowledges, the words in the subtitle paraphrase Aristotle's famous formulation.

For further discussion of the optimal form of the King archetype in men, see Moore and Gillette's book The King Within: Accessing the King [Archetype] in the Male Psyche (1992; 2nd ed., 2007).

Now, Pete Walker lists five positive characteristics of the flight response pattern (page 106) that strike me as aligned with the optimal form of the Warrior archetype of maturity in men and women:

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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