Traumatic memory and Dream process: from unconscious to consciousness

This paper discusses how traumatic memory affects dream process from a psychoanalytic approach. We know that dreams are of great importance in psychoanalysis but also in the psychosomatic since everything a human being experiences has an inscription on both soma and mind on the psychosomatic unity. Our body always participates in conflicting and traumatic situations, especially when these can be neither represented nor contemplated. The first narrative inner action a human being experiences, before verbal ability is achieved, is to dream. In ancient Greece, in the sacred place of the temple of Asklipios, dreams were a healing process called Εγκοίμηση (falling to sleep and be visited by the gods). It was Aristotle who posed the first questions of a more scientific approach for the dream process; do the dreams transmit some knowledge and of what kind, do they want to tell us something, is their source the human being or the gods. Hippocrates wrote that during sleep the soul does all the functions both of body and mind. Since then, neurosciences have given us the knowledge that our senses create and store their stimulations even when the external trigger that created them is no longer present. When we sleep our prefrontal cortex that acts as inspector of our reactions takes time to relax, so in our dreams we can be aggressive, versatile, unstable and lose our critical mind. Finally, in the REM phase of sleep our brain activity is totally driven by the amydgala. Amygdala embodies mainly unconscious traces of experiences and functions as base of emotions. Dreaming is of capital importance for the development, it is essential for our body and mind. It is not just a bio-data, it is a meaningful experience that helps the human being to grow, classify their memories, elaborate their feelings and inner repulsed desires and conflicts. The dream process is a psychosomatic experience, influenced by our psychic function and potential, the quality and quantity of our traumas; along with the quality of our mental function. Traumatic memory can sabotage this process; block the memory network disrupting the streams of communication between unconscious and consciousness. Sandor Ferenczi in 1932 describes trauma as “a shock that is an annihilation of self regard, of the ability to put up resistance, and to act, and think in defense of one’s own self. He suggests shock can be purely physical purely moral or both physical and moral. For Ferenczi trauma occurs as a result of the absence of the maternal object when the subject-infant is in a state of despair. He gives significant importance at the conditions and at the quality of the traumatic experience based on the maternal psychic function and the traces that this one is leaving in their child psychic function. The immature ego is left in a state of severe distress and helplessness. In the current psychoanalytic literature trauma is described as the flood of emotional burdens that provoke feelings of vulnerability or of agonizing despair. Traumas are measured by the quality and quantity of the disorganization they generate rather than the nature of the event that precipitates them. Trauma is about predictability and trust. Everything happens in the present, traumatic potential is overwhelming, shuts down mental life, damaging representations, emotions, leaving the psychic field devoid of positive experience.