Robert Stolorow’s Trauma and Human Existence represents the kind of book trauma theory needs more of, a book that connects the psychology of trauma with a philosophy of human existence. Connecting trauma to the philosophy of existence is at least as useful as connecting trauma to neuroscience, the current wave. In this sense, Stolorow’s is an old fashioned book, and that’s a compliment.
The trouble is the philosophy Stolorow chooses, that of Martin Heidegger. For Heidegger does not fit well with Stolorow’s relational account of trauma. For Stolorow, trauma is the loss of attachment, particularly the inability of parents and others to attune themselves to their children’s moods. His case studies are mostly about patients who experienced troubled childhoods. He uses a well-known quote from D. W. Winnicott as an epigraph to his second chapter, “there is no such thing as an infant.” There is only the relationship between mother and child.
His book could have been just about what is called today developmental trauma disorder (DTD). Except that he bravely writes at length about his horror at finding his wife of many years dead in bed beside him, so cold and alien he couldn’t touch her.
