Sublime

Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.

While Noam in chapter 4 could imagine a trampoline to save future victims of terrorism, traumatized people are trapped in frozen associations: Anybody who wears a turban will try to kill me; any man who finds me attractive wants to rape me.

When memory function is inhibited, emotionally significant information bypasses the frontal lobes and cannot be named or ordered through words or language, as Bessel van der Kolk describes.

Like Maier and Seligman’s dogs, many traumatized people simply give up. Rather than risk experimenting with new options they stay stuck in the fear they know.

We were a group of some twenty students. Among us, there were ex-servicemen from the British armed forces (Y. Lipschitz, Romek Fein, and Adam Schatkai, who was an RAF pilot). In addition, there were ex-servicemen from the Palmach (reservists Nathan Sharon and Daniel Reich) and active members of the Haganah. There was also a deaf student called Emma

Asperger’s assessment of these girls was in the context of his role as director of the Curative Education Clinic in Vienna during the Third Reich. Shockingly, there is strong evidence that this clinic was a core part of the regime’s child ‘euthanasia’ programme.

chronic activation of the stress response inhibits the growth and connectivity of precious neurons, and even damages key brain centers involved in learning, memory, and impulse control.