The intersubjective roots of trauma: understanding the role of relational homelessness in trauma

As the psychoanalyst and philosopher Robert Stolorow has observed, trauma is constituted in an intersubjective context where severe emotional pain finds no relational home in which to be held.

In such a context, painful affective states become unendurable. Stolorow reminds us that pain is not a pathology, but a natural human experience. It is the lack of adequate attunement and responsiveness to the child's painful emotional reactions that makes them intolerable and thus a source of traumatic states and psychopathology. The traumatised child fails to develop the capacity for affect tolerance and the use of affects as guidance signals; painful affects, when felt, are more likely to lead to the onset of traumatic states. 

Furthermore, Stolorow points out that pain should signal us to withdraw and seek safety when we experience a harmful situation. However, when we are traumatised, we may repeatedly expose ourselves to situations that trigger our trauma. 

This inadvertently causes us to be traumatised again and again, reinforcing these patterns of pain and dysfunction.

- Karima Valentina Hočevar and Metka Kuhar, Mudita Institute