Sommarens rorschachseminarier i Castelldefels Spanien hade i år temat trauma. Som alltid tre dagar och tre seminariehållare; i år Luciano Giromini, Italien — When Trauma Meets the Law – om hur Rorschach kan hjälpa oss att skilja mellan äkta trauma och malingering, Ety Berant, Israel — Trauma and war och Stephen Finn, USA — “Please See That My Pain Is Real” – How the Rorschach Helped Heal Somatization Related to Sexual Traumas. Alla väldigt intressanta och med fallstudier därtill. Föreläsningarna kommenterades av Ana Cristina Resende, Brasilien och Irem Atak, Turkiet.
Nedan följer Irems kommentar till Steves föreläsning. Tyvärr kunde jag inte ta med den fantastiska konst av Chiharu Shiota och Laura Makabresku som ursprungligen illustrerade presentationen.
Läs den – den är enastående.
“Does trauma suck the soul out?” – Rorschach as a “Window” for Transformation
What does it mean to be human?
- to be constituted not only by biological and cognitive capacities, but also by a profound susceptibility to physical and psychological wounding.
- to carry the capacity for vulnerability, to be shaped by experiences— both nourishing and wounding.
- to continue negotiating between vulnerability and resilience.
- to live with the capacity for rupture and the equally vital potential for reparation.
- to survive psychic disintegration and to seek relational and symbolic forms of restoration.
- to break, to rebuild, to suffer, and still hope for wholeness.
From a Freudian perspective, to be human is to exist at the intersection of opposing psychic forces—those that seek preservation, growth, and connection (Eros), and those that pull toward destruction, repetition, and the dissolution of the self (Thanatos). Trauma brings this dialectic into stunning relief since it is in the aftermath of trauma that the tension between these instincts becomes most visible. The work of mourning, symbolization, and the seeking of new bonds all reflect the human capacity to heal, to create meaning, and to re-establish connections with others and with oneself. Thus, to be human is to live within this Freudian duality—to endure the rupture of trauma as a confrontation with psychic death, and simultaneously to strive toward reparation, attachment, and life.
Trauma is widely acknowledged as a key etiological contributor to a wide range of psychiatric conditions, including anxiety and mood disorders, difficulties with impulse regulation, psychotic symptoms, substance use problems, personality disorders, behavioral dysregulation, and suicidality. Moreover, it is significantly implicated in the development of somatoform disorders, alexithymia, disordered eating, and self- injurious behavior. Beyond mental health, trauma is also associated with various physical illnesses—such as cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, endocrine, inflammatory, and even oncological conditions. These findings underscore that trauma’s impact extends far beyond PTSD and frequently manifests through complex, multisystemic, and individually variable symptom profiles.
The Rorschach has been recognized as particularly sensitive to trauma, especially in cases involving dissociation and somatization linked to early abuse and attachment disruption. As we have seen Finn explores how projective tests like Rorschach uniquely engage the right hemisphere and limbic structures in the brain—areas critical for processing implicit and emotional memories often inaccessible through self-report tools.
Conventional assessments primarily function to identify psychopathology, inform intervention strategies, and assess progress. In contrast, Therapeutic Assessment reconfigures the evaluative process as a therapeutic encounter aimed at fostering insight and intrapsychic transformation within a collaborative and transformative relationship that promotes self-understanding and psychological change.
Traumatized individuals often experience their emotions not as internal states but as intrusive reminders of the traumatic event itself. This may result in developing a defensive tendency to avoid emotional stimuli altogether. When these emotions remain unacknowledged and unexpressed, they frequently manifest as somatic complaints or psychosomatic symptoms. Alternatively, emotional states may be discharged through maladaptive or inappropriate behaviors. Such individuals often exhibit anger and destructive tendencies, either self-directed or toward others.
Trauma isn’t what happens to us—it’s what happens inside us
in the absence of another mind. (Fonagy, 2019)
From a psychoanalytic perspective, the goal is not to promote forgiveness in a moral sense, but rather to facilitate the psychic liberation from internalized persecutory objects. This involves the gradual dissolution of pathological identifications with these cruel internal objects and the mitigation of psychic pain to the extent possible.
André Green (1999) describes such states as being marked by ”dead zones” in the psyche, where affect and thought cannot be integrated. Thomas Ogden (1994) speaks of the “intersubjective analytic third,” a co-created mental space that allows unformulated experience to take shape. Wilfred Bion’s (1962) concept of “container-contained” further articulates how a subject in distress requires another mind to absorb and metabolize overwhelming emotional states. Szwec (1996) notes that repetitive self-soothing behaviors are often maintained as an attempt to distance oneself from a trauma that has effectively frozen the mental life of the individual. However, he also emphasizes that such actions may represent a subtle form of self-destruction enacted by the organism.
To emerge from a frozen psychic state and reclaim a sense of vitality, the presence of a meaningful relationship is essential. However, in the aftermath of trauma, all foundational trust in the world—and in others—has often been profoundly disrupted. The capacity to receive help becomes nearly inaccessible. In an effort to shield oneself from further harm, the individual simultaneously fears compassion and care, while also feeling shame over their helplessness and dependency.
In some cases, the dominant affect is not shame but rage — a force that serves to isolate the survivor from others. Here, anger becomes both a defense against internal death and a desperate means of feeling alive. Lifton (1980) refers to this existential transformation as “the mark of death.” It denotes the lasting psychic imprint that trauma leaves, fundamentally altering one’s experience of being alive.
In therapeutic work, the psychotherapist must be prepared to receive and interpret intense negative transferences. Despite occupying a helping position, the therapist will likely be perceived as a hostile or abandoning object due to the patient’s impaired capacity for trust. Expecting the patient to exclude the therapist from their internalized world of danger and betrayal would be unrealistic. As such, the task for the therapist is to bear these projections without retaliation, and to metabolize them on behalf of the patient.
With the Rorschach?
By examining how an individual engages with ambiguous stimuli under conditions of mild psychological stress, the Rorschach offers valuable, nonverbal insight into their regulatory window, their symbolizing capacity, and their ability to maintain coherence under arousal.
Since the Window of Tolerance is shaped interpersonally (especially in early development), the Rorschach can also be viewed as a probe for attachment-related regulatory capacities, including mentalization and reflective functioning—which are often compromised in individuals with complex trauma histories.
The capacity to symbolize, often disrupted in trauma, is essential for staying within the window. The Rorschach reveals whether a person can use imagery, abstraction, or elaboration without collapsing into concrete, fragmented, or bizarre responses—suggesting either emotional resilience or dysregulation.
Like in psychotherapy, the examiner can assume a crucial role as a witness—one who holds and sustains psychic reality within the qualified analytic space of test environment. The test setting can have the possibility to become a bearer of memory, of fantasies, and of that which could not previously be symbolized. This function enables what was once unspeakable to begin to take shape in language and thought. André Green emphasizes that the analytic frame may allow for the development of a new object relationship, one capable of restructuring meaning that could not be established at the time of the original trauma.
In such work mentioned, the point is to remain attentive, patient, grounded in reality, and capable of tolerating intense negative transference. Equally essential is the awareness of countertransference reactions. Without these capacities, there is a latent wish—often shared unconsciously by both parties—for everything that occurred to simply vanish.
Rorschach within the transitional space
Transitional space has the capacity as a psychic buffer, a protective zone where external and internal realities are held in balance, allowing for symbolic play, creativity, and emotional processing. When this area is preserved, the psyche retains its capacity to regulate and integrate painful experiences without being overwhelmed.
We know that trauma occurs when this psychic interface is breached or damaged, rendering the individual unable to metabolize affective overload.
Employing the Rorschach within the conceptual framework of transitional space enables clinicians to transcend purely diagnostic aims and engage with responses as symbolic manifestations arising within an intersubjective context. This perspective highlights the test’s creative, relational, and intrinsically human dimensions, situating it as not merely an assessment tool but as a potential arena for meaning-making, symbol formation, and psychic integration.
Symbolization is both relational and reparative: it occurs through the presence of others and often only becomes possible when the individual can re-experience psychic reality in a shared, co-constructed space. In trauma, where the language has already collapsed, we should use the accurate form of relating and Therapeutic Assessment has a great capacity to do this.
İREM ATAK, Castelldefels, 2025
