Onno Van Der Hart Quotes & Sayings

consciousness (hypoarousal). When individuals are extremely hypoaroused they may not encode much of what is happening, may feel the event is not real, and may experience emotional and bodily anesthesia. To the extent that individuals nonetheless recall the events, all of these experiences make it more difficult for them to eventually fully integrate the experience. — Onno Van Der Hart

Once this pathogenic kernel could be integrated, her anxiety abated, and her ANP and EP fully integrated. — Onno Van Der Hart

social isolation and lack of self awareness can occur partly because there are simply no words to tell the story. — Onno Van Der Hart

Who was my other self? Though we had split one personality between us, I was the majority shareholder. I went to school, made friends, gained experience, developing my part of the personality, while she remained morally and emotionally a child, functioning on instinct rather than on intelligence. - Sylvia Fraser (1987, p. 24) — Onno Van Der Hart

Early traumatization is a major risk factor for more severe symptoms that persist over time. Thus childhood traumatization plays a central role in the development of trauma-related disorders in children and adults. — Onno Van Der Hart

The core issue in traumatization is that survivors have been unable to realize fully what has happened to them and how it affects their lives and who they are. In other words, the inability to realize involves many ways of not knowing massive psychic trauma — Onno Van Der Hart

Their suffering essentially relates to a terrifying and painful past that haunts them. — Onno Van Der Hart

Attachment is central to the context in which all other action systems mature. If attachment is disrupted early in life, it may lead to maladaptive functioning in various areas of life because the most basic action systems do not function well. Attachment relationships assist individuals in regulating their emotions and physiology, providing basic internal and relational stability. — Onno Van Der Hart

observations suggest that the survivor as ANP typically engages in tasks of daily life such as reproduction, attachment, caretaking, and other social action tendencies, and avoidance of traumatic memories, which support a focus on daily life issues. In contrast, the survivor as EP primarily displays evolutionary defensive and emotional reactions to the (perceived) threat on which he or she seems to be fixated. Third, survivors should be very susceptible to classical conditioning, because, as we discuss below, EP and ANP strongly respond to unconditioned and conditioned threat cues. — Onno Van Der Hart

Trauma-related structural dissociation should be distinguished from more ubiquitous phenomena that are often termed dissociation, but likely have a different underlying process. Over the past several decades the original meaning of dissociation has been quite extended by the addition of other phenomena not typically considered to be dissociative. These include alterations in consciousness such as absorption, daydreaming, imaginative involvement, altered time sense, trance-like behavior, and "highway hypnosis" — Onno Van Der Hart

Comfort, support, and care are essential in maintaining and improving an individual's mental efficiency, in part because they have important physiological calming effects (Schore, 1994; 2003b), and favorable effects on the immune system. — Onno Van Der Hart

Neglect is a form of traumatization in which there is an absence of essential physical or emotional care, soothing, and restorative experiences from significant others. In children these experiences are developmentally requisite, and in adults they may be needed under certain circumstances, such as the aftermath of potentially traumatizing events. — Onno Van Der Hart

A major problem for survivors is that their sense of self is too restricted and rigid within dissociative parts, because it has been derived from a range of experiences and action systems that is too limited, and excludes too much of the survivor's history. When survivors are unable to bind actions adequately with a sense of self in the moment, they experience symptoms of depersonalization. — Onno Van Der Hart

unable to realize she was grown and the incest was no longer about to happen. When traumatic memories are reactivated, access to other memories is more or less obstructed. EP often seems unaware of much, if anything, about the present, and does not necessarily have access to skills and factual knowledge that are available to ANP — Onno Van Der Hart

traumatized individuals (as EP) "are continuing the action, or rather the attempt at action, which began when the thing happened; and they exhaust themselves in these everlasting recommencements" (p. 663). — Onno Van Der Hart

Based on theoretical analysis, clinical observations, and some research findings, as well as on 19th and early 20th century literature on dissociation, we propose that traumatization essentially involves a degree of dissociative division of the personality that likely occurs along the lines of innate action systems of daily life and defense - what has been called structural dissociation of the personality. Dissociation of the personality develops when children or adults are exposed to potentially traumatizing events, and when their integrative capacity is insufficient to (fully) integrate these experiences within the confines of a relatively coherent personality. — Onno Van Der Hart

Structural dissociation occurs during confrontations with overwhelming events when mental efficiency is too low. — Onno Van Der Hart

..."Suzette Boon also become very much involved [in dissocation]... She was in my office and was a family therapist, and when I left for a yearlong sabbatical in Isreal, she took over my patients. And the interesting thing is that she was very skeptical about what I was seeing, while now she's one of the real experts in Europe and has done marvelous research with regard to the diagnosis of the dissociative disorders! — Onno Van Der Hart

First, there is the separation cry, which is a young mammal's distressed vocalization when separated from a caretaker. This cry is actually an attempt to regain attachment upon separation, and thus we call it the attachment cry. Other defensive subsystems include hypervigilance and scanning the environment, flight, freeze with analgesia, fight, total submission with anesthesia, and recuperative states of rest, wound care, isolation from the group, and gradual return to daily activities — Onno Van Der Hart

Genetic factors may contribute to vulnerability to stressful situations and to personality characteristics that influence the person's risk for entering into potentially hazardous situations (Jang et al., 2003). However, a direct genetic link to traumatization is far from clear (Brewin et al., 2000; Emily et al., 2003; McNally, 2003). — Onno Van Der Hart

As EP, survivors have been unable to create a complete personal story and are unable to share the original experience verbally and socially. They are stuck in the traumatic experience where they relive rather than retell their terror. — Onno Van Der Hart

The criteria of agency and ownership distinguish structural dissociation from other manifestations of insufficient integration such as intruding panic attacks in panic disorder or intrusions of negative cognitions in major depression. — Onno Van Der Hart

Sometimes patients may report traumatic memories of events that they have not actually experienced themselves. Van der Hart and Van der Velden (1995) — Onno Van Der Hart