In a new revised and expanded edition Tenderness-Transform the traumaLaurent Tigrane Tovmassia, doctor in fundamental psychopathology and psychoanalysisenriches the different chapters andxposes the latest research on the subject.
Sexual assault, genocide, torture, wars… how can we take care of the many victims of extreme psychotrauma?
This work questions the role of the psychotherapist in supporting the patient. Faced with psychic annihilation,
to the rupture of the feeling of continuity of existence:
– How to respond to distress?
– How to react to frequent denial of the environment?
– What are the possible ways to transform the trauma?
To these questions, the author answers: “tenderness”! In the psychotherapeutic process, the therapist may feel helpless. He must then find the resources to get the two protagonists out of this distress. He can only find these resources in tenderness. The act that is then committed transforms the distress. Tenderness allows a way out of the trauma by moving from a link to the aggressor who freezes, towards a link to the clinician who liberates.
• Laurent Tigrane Tovmassian (dir.), Tenderness-Transforming trauma – 2nd revised and expanded edition, Ed. In press, €20, 344 p.
