ABSTRACT
The current scientific interest in positive psychotraumatology is by no means intended to diminish the importance of trauma or to minimize the suffering that accompanies its painful reality. Nor does it seek to cast doubt on trauma’s potential to cause severe disruptions in the individual’s sense of identity. Rather, it provides a theoretical framework by which we might gain a better understanding of the processes of traumatization, despair, and growth and a more holistic perspective on traumatic experiences. Its scope encompasses the paradoxical nature of human life in its entirety, especially the paradox that gain may even occur through loss. People affected by trauma-generated suffering are forced into the extremes of polarized thinking and initiated into a state of unresolved paradox as new ways of being are revealed from the realm of wisdom. In states of traumatic distress, the persona is stripped away like a husk, or, in the language of the spiritual traditions, a shedding of self, not gradual but sudden, takes place, leading to a transformed engagement with life. The suffering associated with extreme trauma thrusts the individual abruptly into an awareness of life’s transience and dissolves the rigid boundaries between self and other. This can lead either to a dangerous 76psychotic breakdown or conversely to a deeper consciousness of the interconnectedness of all things.
