​​​Is Trauma always the result of living through a war?
No, it is not. Trauma, according to Spiegel, is "the experience of being made into an object, the victim of someone else's rage, of nature's indifference, or one's physical and psychological limitations."
Elizabeth F. Howell
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What Does the Fear of Abandonment Look Like?
The individuals who struggle with this fear in their relationships strive to "attain the assurance of love and, consequently, the maintenance of security" because even the thought "of abandonment creates anxiety which" results in"the non-valued self."
Germaine Guex
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What does Masochism mean?
"The term masochism as used by psychoanalysts does not connote a love of pain and suffering. The person who behaves masochistically endures pain and suffering in the hope, conscious or unconscious, of some greater good" and "masochistic behavior is not necessarily pathological" it is "self-abnegating."
Nancy McWilliams
Why is there an emphasis in psychoanalytic work on the exploration of the underlying causes of immediate issues?
Suppose you have a bad backache. You may alleviate the pain but you need to learn what motion or weight caused the pain and how it impacts your back, so the next time you are in the same situation, you will have a better chance of helping yourself avoid what causes you backaches. Hence, you will not be struggling with recurrent backache. The same is true for psychotherapy and the recurrent patterns that your psyche gets stuck in.
What is Depth Psychology?
Depth psychology comprises all the schools of psychoanalysis and Jungian psychology (analytical psychology); they share the belief that humans have a dynamic unconscious life that impacts how they feel, think, behave, and dream. The dynamic unconscious impacts everyone's life; sometimes, this is why people find themselves in harmful repetitive patterns, multiple broken relationships, encountering the same issues at work even after changing jobs, or recurrent disturbing dreams.