Defense mechanism, cognitive belief systems, and the intensity of the trauma interfere with the processing of new experiences (van der kolk, 1997). This may influence people’s psychological processes and produce new behaviors that may contrast with old behaviors, leading to the development of new perceptions and beliefs (Munsterberg, 1927). Such initial emotional processes are sometimes observed by therapist and patients as temporary but may later establish intensive cognitive and emotional states within the affected person (Wundt, 1997).
Emotions are physiological reactions that may be so intense that the persons connect them with a cognitive process (van der Kolk, 1997). Affective and cognitive processes then combine to create a memory of an event (Wundt, 1997). The person’s perception of sensational and affective components of this experience, whether immediate or historical, is often contingent upon the extent and intensity of the experience. In a given moment people may consciously acknowledge only one feeling while they cognitively control or reduce other feelings (Wundt, 1997).
Wundt (1997) described this unity of the affective state as a theoretical process whereby the intensity of one feeling is associated with an idea or experience, and the subjugation of other emotions may then occur. However, traumatic experience may initiate such repression of affect and may lead people to make assumptions about the environment that may be different than those beliefs they held prior to the traumatic experience (Freud, 1954). This conflict between their well-established expectations may contribute to an underlying distrust of their environment and may result in feelings of helplessness and inadequacy.
The resulting conflict between their unresolved cognitive processes and their desire to release pent-up emotion about a trauma may result in regression behaviors (Freud, 1954). Also, affective and cognitive recollection of the past trauma can be ameliorated through control mechanism (Freud, 1954) However, therapeutic techniques may aid in clarifying cognitive and affective processes associated with the traumatic experience and may reduce misperceptions and misrepresentations of the traumatic event (Foa & Meadows, 1997; Jaycox, Foa & Morral, 1998; Kendel, 1999; van der kolk, 1997).
The patient was a 29-year-old woman who at the time of referral for hypnosis had been in traditional insight-oriented therapy for approximately five years. The frequency of those sessions varied somewhat during that time, and the goal was alleviating anxiety, particularly manifest in starting and maintaining relationships with men. Initially in therapy the patient had presented as severely anxious, unable to sustain eye contact, and subject to long periods of silence while occasionally regressing to approximate fetal position posture.
Later in therapy the patient voiced awareness that “something [was] still not right,” describing this as gnawing at her, producing diffuse anxiety, vaguely preoccupying, and generally experienced as an abiding dysphoria. Concurrently she focused more pointedly on the problem of relationships and “pushing men away. ” When the patient was in her mid-twenties a friend of a friend had broken a sexual boundary with her at an overnight gathering. Fully aware of it, she kept it private until late in the work. Discussing it with her therapist ushered in more intense anxiety.