Anticipatory awareness of emotionally charged targets by individuals with histories of emotional trauma

Journal of Parapsychology, The, Spring, 2004 by Theo K. de Graaf, Joop M. Houtkooper

Individual vulnerability to stress is apparently determined partly by genetic-constitutional and partly by psychological factors. With regard to the latter, main weight should be afforded to traumatic experiences from the past, especially those of early childhood, which have sensitized the person concerned to certain current stressors. This led the first author to infer the existence of a personal sensitization factor (PSF), representing a dormant intrapsychic conflict resulting from the internalization of an early traumatic experience or, for that matter, a traumatic object-relationship that has sensitized the individual to life events "congruent" with the original traumatic experience (Graaf, 1998a, 1998b; Graaf & Van der Molen, 1989, 1996). Accordingly, the precipitating, or "trigger" event is called the congruent life event (CLE).

The concept of a PSF appeared to be very helpful in explaining why a "psychobiological" ailment, such as a depressive illness or a heart attack, could occur following such a common life event as one's child leaving home. (There is, by now, strong and direct evidence in favor of an intimate connection between the occurrence of cardiovascular disease on the one hand and stressful experiences or circumstances on the other (Schnurr, Spiro III, & Paris, 2000). In the case of a child's leaving home, the child's independence often appeared to have stirred up very painful or guilt-ridden memories in the parents about a traumatic separation from their own parents, e.g., because of the latters' premature death or because of being sent away from home at a very early age.

The following two case histories may illustrate this point.

Case 1

   A 33-year-old married man was sent to me [TKdG] with severe
   depression, consisting of an inability to work, a strong inclination
   to shut himself off from his surroundings, and strong suicidal
   tendencies. Until recently he had functioned well but rather
   compulsively. The symptoms suddenly appeared when, at his work
   as a manager, he was forced by the management to fire on the
   spot two employees who were not working satisfactorily, without
   due process of law. Not until the family history had become known
   in depth during therapy did it appear that during his childhood
   he had been a regular witness to the physical abuse of his two
   elder sisters by both his parents.

Case 2

   Bill, B5 years of age, refrained from drinking coffee, tea, etc.,
   when in the company of strangers, for fear that his hand would
   start to tremble and cause him to spill the drink. His phobia began
   after he had become a father for the first time and some
   friends had raised their glasses to toast his and his son's health.
   There was a 50-year age difference between himself and his father,
   who had been a distant and very authoritarian man, cynical
   and harsh towards his son. When Bill was about 13 years of age,
   his father developed a severe form of Parkinson's disease and he
   remembered that during mealtimes his father used to tremble to
   such an extent that he made a terrible mess on the table and on
   his clothes. Bill had been ashamed of his father's illness, but at
   the same time had felt very guilty about having these feelings.

The examples presented here show that the precipitating events do not take place within a void, but are linked to a pre-existing psychic conflict, which, in turn, is the consequence of earlier psychotraumatic experiences. (This corresponds with what Fairbairn (1943/1952) has called the "transference to the trauma.") A precondition for this transference phenomenon to occur is the presence of a psychic conflict that causes so much intrapsychic tension that it provokes an urgent need to seek an outer for this tension by means of projection or other forms of externalization.

Inasmuch as the traumatic and conflicting content of the PSF is reactivated or kindled by the congruent life event, the PSF itself is also able to kindle or facilitate perception of the appropriate CLE, adding and passing on to the event its own aggressive properties. In the case of Bill, for instance, one is equally justified in stating that the glass-raising ceremony had stirred up the painful and guilt-ridden memories about his father's disablement as in stating that the memories had selected this particular percept, out of all possible other percepts, and brought it into focus because of its very suitability to externalize the inner conflict through dramatization. In this respect, the precipitating event has much in common with the so-called "day's residue," which, according to Freud (1900), is chosen by the "ego" because of its associative resemblance to a recently reactivated psychic conflict, to become the very core of the manifest dream through which this conflict can be dramatized. "The Interpretation of Dreams" was written during the very first stages of Freud's acquaintance with the "unconscious." As such, it bears a hallmark of strong originality, ingenuity, and scientific reasoning.