Editorial

Abstract

We have had such a good response to our invitation for submissions relating to trauma that the theme will continue beyond this special issue, into the spring issue. We would like to foster debate and so would welcome short pieces (4000 words) in response to the papers here. In this issue, we have a diverse collection of papers approaching the topic of trauma from very different angles. The first paper, a single case study by Fiorenzo Ranieri, tracks the ways in which a pre-teen with a history of complex trauma uses the mind of her therapist to scaffold her rediscovery of the world from a place of safety following her adoption. Like a much younger child, she wants to notice and name the physical world, particularly places of importance to her but also the most simple items: ‘An “our” apple must be less distressing than “her” apple, linked to her memories. “Our” apple is less persecutory because it is thought together in a context, that of psychotherapy, which is sufficiently welcoming and non-conflictual . . . for her it is important that I explore things emotionally, in order to understand them as a form of personal experience. Once the objects are understood in this sense, through me Sarah too will be able to re -appropriate them without feeling them hard and stinging, but soft enough to be integrated.’ Ranieri shows us how this process went on to encompass the human objects of her past and present and, in time, allowed the construction of a safer internal world. He notes that by the end of treatment, the girl was able to begin her somewhat delayed adolescent development. She was now psychologically safe enough to begin taking the healthy risks that development demands. For Graham Music, this capacity to reach out or move towards – towards the future, or towards others, with all the risk and lust for life that requires – is not just the reward of recovering from trauma, but an essential part of the healing process. Music is also clear that anger is a part of healing. In ‘Resparking from flatness: New thoughts on shut-down states after trauma and neglect,’ he delineates three kinds of shutdown states and how to work with them. He describes work from his early career, as well as more recent work, comparing his changing technique. We read about a boy whose defences might have passed for liveliness before a less attentive observer: ‘ . . . he demonstrated a quicksilver ability on the football field, the bullying stopped and he could stay even more under the radar, gliding around the dangers of group-life with his big smile, rather like he glided past tackles on the football pitch.’ Music describes a pincer movement. As a therapist, he had to challenge this evasive quality, but this would not have been helpful if he had not first created a space where it was safe for a black boy to be angry: safe from retaliation and safe from being misconstrued. I was moved by the delicacy with which Music notes the nascent rage beneath a look of disgust on his JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY 2021, VOL. 47, NO. 3, 333–337 https://doi.org/10.1080/0075417X.2021.2018480