Conferenza della prof. Wendy D’Andrea

ore 10.00 presso la sala riunioni DPSS 1

07.10.2014

Prof. Wendy D’Andrea (New School for Social Research, New York)

Psychological trauma has noted long-term sequelae for mental and physical health, but the mechanisms associated with disrupted social, cognitive, and affective processing are not well-understood. This gap in the literature has arisen for at least two reasons: 1) the trauma field focuses on PTSD as the only trauma response, and ignores trauma reactions like borderline personality and depression, and 2) the trauma field has focused exclusively on hyper-arousal and hyper-reactivity to
threat. However, trauma survivors have symptom profiles extending largely beyond PTSD and noted physiological alterations that include both too much and too little reactivity. This talk will present data from several studies which examine both elevated and blunted physiological and affective reactivity as a transdiagnostic construct underlying trauma-related psychopathology. In particular, these studies focus on the absence of affect, occurring in the context of threat, as a  conduit between loss of self-awareness and social processing. These findings, which show evidence of blunted arousal as a mechanism in
post-trauma adaptation, will be discussed in light of treatment models and will highlight limitations with keeping a narrow treatment focus on short-term exposure-based psychotherapies.