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The abreaction seeks to pave the way for the patient to overcome the trauma. Learn more about this term of psychoanalysis.
Many times, a situation impacts us in such a way that we are left without resources to face it. It becomes a painful and unpleasant experience that seems better if we hide it. The abreaction is the way to convey an adaptive and favorable response that allows you to deal with this episode.
hide under the rug it does not imply that the fact is not there and that at any moment it can be present. Let’s see more in detail.
What is abreaction?
According to Psychoanalysis Dictionaries, abreaction refers to the appearance in the field of consciousness of an affect hitherto repressed. It refers to the discharge of an emotion associated with a trauma that was repressed.
The subject, going through a painful or traumatic experience, was not able to express it and process it at the time. As a defense mechanism, he suppressed her.
What the abreaction is concerned with is offer the possibility of releasing said emotional state and make it conscious and accessible to work on it. It can occur spontaneously or guided.
In the first case, it arises by association with some stimulus or memory that triggers the traumatic event. For example, a smell that takes us to the scene in which we find our pet lifeless and that we cancel completely.
However, it is this very thing that frees the memory from a deleterious effect. If we had to explain it in the ordinary way, we would say that it is an expression on time. The memory is released from that harmful load.
However, it can also be guided and occurs within the framework of psychotherapy. The therapist facilitates that the affect joins the memory, seeking that the patient can reconstruct the complete event and providing resources that allow him to face it.
Origin of the concept of abreaction
The abreaction is a term that comes from the hand of Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer, promoters of psychoanalysis. According to him Dictionary of psychoanalysis of Laplanche and Pontalis, it is a neologism made up of the prefix “ab” and the word “reaction”, which give the idea of separation and distance.
A person, after going through a trauma, you can block out the emotion it arouses in you and leave it hidden. This causes the traumatic event is not processed, so the patient is imprisoned by it. Positioning ourselves in front of a painful episode and resignifying it allows us to accept that it existed. Then it is possible to work on that emotion and control it.
The importance of expressing emotions
Abreaction, catharsis, emotional management, expressing oneself. Whatever we want to call it. From Freud to current thinkers, the human need to put a name to the discomfort that afflicts us and work on it is insisted on.
Emotions are the signals we have to identify that something is pleasant or unpleasant for us. Ignoring them does not prevent the event from occurring or the situation from affecting us, quite the contrary. The event is already there and how we are able to stand in front of it will determine the way we go through it and live.
Silencing emotions and not recognizing them does not prevent them from existing. They become a hindrance to well-being, affecting our daily functioning.
Freud and Breuer agreed on this point. All those representations that were separated from the normal course of thought and that remain in an unconscious state, they become pathogenic and are at the root of neurotic symptoms. Hence, it is necessary to intervene with techniques and accompany the patient to discover what is so painful which is repressed.
Both thinkers identified that some of the causes that prevent the person from reacting are the following:
- the mental state in which he was.
- Social causes: that is, circumstances or restrictions that prevent the subject from manifesting and expressing himself.
- Lastly, it can be a decision to forget said memoryseeking to suppress it and remove it from his thought.
Abreaction: rebuild so as not to be trapped
It is true that certain experiences are so shocking that we would prefer to forget about them, reset our minds and pretend that nothing happened. In the short term, that seems like the most convenient way out.
But nevertheless, in the long term it is a measure that leaves us in a precarious balanceat the mercy of the memory, of any unforeseen event that could jeopardize that Sandcastle.
The painful can become a source of resilience if we are able to face it. Psychotherapy can be a source of helpin which the combination of professional guidance and personal resources paves the way for well-being.
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