The death of the self in posttraumatic experience

Philosophical Psychology ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cphp20 The death of the self in posttraumatic experience Jake Dorothy & Emily Hughes To cite this article: Jake Dorothy & Emily Hughes (21 Dec 2023): The death of the self in posttraumatic experience, Philosophical Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2023.2294776 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2023.2294776 © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 21 Dec 2023. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cphp20 PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2023.2294776 The death of the self in posttraumatic experience Jake Dorothy and Emily Hughes Department of Philosophy, University of York, York, UK ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Survivors of trauma commonly report feeling as though a part of themselves has died. This article provides a theoretical interpretation of this phenomenon, drawing on Waldenfels' notion of the split self. We argue that trauma gives rise to an explicit tension between the lived and corporeal body which is so profoundly distressing that it can be experienced by survivors as the death of part of oneself. We explore the ways in which this is manifest in the posttraumatic phenomena of dissociation; indescribability; and the fragmentation and repetition of time. Acknowledging that the traumatic loss of part of oneself involves significant grief, we then consider whether the bereavement literature might be helpfully applied. We focus specifically upon the continuing bonds model, which emphasizes an ongoing and meaningful relationship with the deceased through an active process of memorializing. In considering how this might be appropriated to the death of the self in trauma, we suggest that the development of an intrapersonal relationship between parts lost and living might, over time, offer a unique way in which to adapt to loss and approach the future. Received 29 September 2023 Accepted 7 December 2023 KEYWORDS Death of the self; the split self; phenomenology of posttraumatic stress disorder; trauma and grief; continuing bonds; philosophy of psychiatry Introduction Confronted with the shock of violence and violation, it is common for survivors of traumatic events to feel that they are no longer the same person that they were before becoming traumatized. Although this can operate at the level of altered beliefs, with assumptions about one’s safety in the world having been shattered (Janoff-Bulman, 1992), for many it also involves a profound sense of loss and mourning. Indeed, survivors often report feeling as though a part of themselves has died (Herman, 1992). As British Member of Parliament Jamie Wallis remarked in the aftermath of a sexual assault, “in that moment, a part of me died and I have been trying to get it back ever since” (British British Broadcasting Corporation [B.B.C.], 2022). CONTACT Jake Dorothy YO10 5DD, UK jake.dorothy@york.ac.uk Department of Philosophy, University of York, York © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. 2 J. DOROTHY AND E. HUGHES Trauma can thus rupture the self and splinter it apart such that, whilst part of the self continues to endure, often in an impoverished form, another part is irredeemably lost. In order to reconfigure or remake the self after a traumatic event, survivors are confronted with the distressing task of trying to reconcile these two seemingly incongruous parts of themselves. As philosopher Susan Brison writes of her violent sexual attack: “For the first several months after my attack, I led a spectral existence, not quite sure whether I had died and the world went on without me, or whether I was alive but in a totally alien world . . . I felt as though I’d somehow outlived myself” (Brison, 2002, pp. 8–9).1 Widely described in the testimonies of survivors, we suggest that this disorienting rupture of the self and the ambiguous sense that one is partly alive and partly dead is operative in a number of the defining symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including reexperiencing phenomena and dissociative responses (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). Such symptoms encapsulate both heightened arousal and chronic detachment, the appearance of which cleaves a stark distinction between one’s prior self-experience and that which follows. This distinction may also be evident in more general responses to trauma such as depression, which can often resemble or overlap with symptoms of PTSD (Wilde, 2019). Yet, many important philosophical questions remain unresolved. Indeed, the meaning and significance of the death of the self in posttraumatic experience, and the ways in which survivors might be best supported in reconfiguring one’s self, is not well understood in the philosophy of psychiatry and psychology. The aim of this article is to explore what it might mean when, in the aftermath of a traumatic event, survivors describe feeling as though a part of them has died. As Susan Brison asks: “How does a life-threatening event come to be experienced as self-annihilating? And what self is it who remembers having had this experience?” (Brison, 2002, p. 38). Our phenomenological interpretation will consider the ways in which the death of the self is manifest in the embodied, lived experience of survivors. We focus specifically upon survivors of single-event trauma occurring in adulthood rather than complex developmental trauma, given that survivors of the latter typically face challenges in the early development of a sense of self, such that later or ongoing disruption is likely to be differently experienced.2 After introducing Bernhard Waldenfels’ interpretation of embodied lived experience according to the “split self”, we firstly consider some ways in which the alienation and estrangement of the self in posttraumatic experience might be understood according to an incongruity between the corporeal body that one has, and the lived body that one is. In so doing, we will explore the way in which this disconnect is reflected in the phenomena of dissociation; indescribability; and the fragmentation and repetition of time. Our interpretation will be primarily informed by three first-person PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 3 testimonies that each give remarkable insight into the experience of surviving a single-event trauma: Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self by Susan Brison (2002), Know My Name by Chanel Miller (2019), and Trauma and Human Existence: Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Reflections by Robert Stolorow (2015). Secondly, we consider how it is that the traumatized might be seen to be grieving the loss of the self, and come to relate to the part of oneself that has died. In a novel appropriation of the concept of continuing bonds from the bereavement literature, we consider to what extent one might develop an intrapersonal bond with the part of oneself that has died; meaningfully adapting to the loss of self as opposed to seeking full relinquishment or reintegration, a common therapeutic goal that we suggest may not always feel possible or desirable for survivors. The ‘split self’ Bernhard Waldenfels’ “split self” (Waldenfels, 2004, 2011) is an iteration of the idea – prominent throughout the history of phenomenology – that embodied experience involves both having a body that is passively affected (Körper) and being a body that actively understands (Leib). For Waldenfels, the fissure between the objective or corporeal body and the subjective or lived body is a difference intrinsic to human existence; the human being is a liminal being, constituted by “a corporeal body is never entirely present to itself” (Waldenfels, 2011, p. 43). In ordinary, everyday life, bodily experience is pre-reflectively incorporated into a more or less unified experience of the self which unfolds through the recollection of the past, the projection toward the future, and the meaningful engagement with the present. Nevertheless, as Waldenfels notably emphasizes, the gap between having a body and being a body means that this unified, narratable and temporally extended self is necessarily precarious. As Waldenfels writes: If we assume, as Helmuth Plessner does, that being-a-body and having-a-body are closely connected, we are faced with a difference that pertains to the sphere of our body, constituting its very being rather than undermining it. Our bodily experience would then by far exceed the experience of the body. (Waldenfels, 2011, p. 44) This excess of bodily experience (having a body) over the experience of the body (being a body) is reflected in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between the pre-personal and personal body in the Phenomenology of Perception. He writes: “ . . . my organism – as a pre-personal adhesion to the general form of the world, as an anonymous and general existence – plays the role of an innate complex beneath the level of my personal life” (Merleau-Ponty, 2012 [1945], p. 86). This eccentric exposure to alterity makes the personal fragile because, as Giovanni 4 J. DOROTHY AND E. HUGHES Stanghellini emphasizes in Lost in Dialogue, “I experience myself as more than my sense of being a self” (Stanghellini, 2017, p. 28). Indeed, for Waldenfels, this ambiguity between pre-personal bodily experience and the personal experience of the body implies that human beings are always at risk of being exposed to the alien to that which eludes our grasp, which disturbs, entices, and terrifies us (Waldenfels, 2011, p. 3). As such, whilst the body is at once “seeing and seen, hearing and heard, touching and touched, moving and moved,” the noncoincidence of the one who sees and what is seen “should be viewed as a liability, for it characterizes the very being of our body, which refers to itself and at the same time evades itself” (Waldenfels, 2011, pp. 49–50). Of particular relevance to our interpretation of the death of the self in posttraumatic experience, Waldenfels goes on to suggest that traumatic events exemplify the way in which the liability of the split self can be exploited, to a pathological degree, such that the tension between the corporeal body and the lived body becomes explicit in distressing and painful ways. Specifically, the harm inflicted upon the corporeal body in trauma fundamentally resists the capacity of the lived body to em-body it; to gather and organize bodily experience into any coherent (narrative, temporal) experience of the body. As a result, bodily experience is not only in excess of the experience of the body, but becomes overtly incongruous with it, an incommensurability which, its extreme form, gives rise to what Waldenfels describes as the “dismembered split self” (see Waldenfels, 2011, p. 51). This resonates with Edward S. Casey’s description of traumatic body memories and the phenomenon of fragmentation in particular. As he writes in Remembering (Casey, 2000): A traumatic body memory bears on what Lacan has called “le corps morcelle.” This is the body as broken down into uncoordinated parts and thus as incapable of the type of continuous, spontaneous action undertaken by the intact body . . . The fragmented body is inefficacious and irregular; indeed, its possibilities of free movement have become constricted precisely because of the trauma that has disrupted its spontaneous actions. (p. 155) Confronted with this irregular body, survivors of trauma frequently endure an amorphous and often unbearable feeling of self-alienation; painfully estranged from the absent and withdrawn part of themselves. Unable to accommodate this “pathological fissure,” the survivor of trauma remains “fixated on what happened” yet “unable to adequately respond to it” (see Waldenfels, 2011, p. 52).3 Given that the self must be more or less pre-reflectively unified if the subject is to be “continuous” and “efficacious,” our view is that this inability to accommodate the pathological fissure of the split self can result in an impoverishment of subjectivity so profound that a survivor may have the very real sense that PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 5 part of them has died. Drawing on the testimonies of Brison, Miller and Stolorow, the following will explore three different, but interrelated, ways in which this death of the self can manifest in posttraumatic experience: through the phenomena of dissociation; indescribability; and the fragmentation and repetition of time. The death of the self as manifest in posttraumatic phenomena Dissociation Dissociation is highly associated with trauma, comprising part of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD and involving both depersonalization and derealization (APA, 2013). The former, characterized by a persistent feeling of detachment from one’s body or mental processes, involves encountering one’s self or body as if one were an outside observer, or with an accompanying a sense of unreality. In the latter, such feelings of unreality concern one’s surroundings (e.g., perceiving the world as dreamlike, distant, or distorted), although depersonalization and derealization are not mutually exclusive and indeed frequently co-occur. Although dissociation is a transdiagnostic phenomenon (Černis et al., 2018), such experiences have been reported at a rate of 15–30% in PTSD (Wolf et al., 2012): unsurprisingly, given that recent research indicates that dissociative experiences may arise from a heightened negative sensitivity to affect leading to threat-based cognitive appraisals (Černis et al., 2022), corresponding with trauma survivors’ increased hypervigilance and altered emotional arousal. Central to dissociative reactions are alterations in embodied experience. Herman (1992) reports on the extent to which depersonalization affects perspectival orientation, with many survivors describing the experience of perceiving their bodies from an external, third-person point of view, as if from above or afar. van der Hart et al. (2006) additionally note that somatoform pathologies are integral to traumatic dissociation, including varying degrees of anesthesia across different sensory modalities, analgesia, and loss of motor actions (e.g., being unable to move, speak, or swallow). When such symptoms become ongoing features of posttraumatic life, they typically lead to confusion or distress, resulting in a disconnection from one’s prior attitude toward the world. This has considerable ramifications for both sense of self and intersubjectivity, involving feelings of self-alienation and separation from others. Indeed, it has been argued that, following trauma, the ordinary feeling of belonging is replaced by a feeling of not being at home in the world (Wilde, 2022) in which one’s basic sense of trust is undermined (Ratcliffe et al., 2014). Such a loss of homeliness, trust, and belonging is intrinsically intersubjective, but further compounds disturbances in embodiment as the background feeling of safety remains threatened. This pervasive, underlying threat gives rise to dissociative experiences 6 J. DOROTHY AND E. HUGHES that are themselves experienced as elusive and beyond one’s grasp. Chanel Miller, a survivor of sexual assault, illustrates this bodily and interpersonal fragmentation in her account of purchasing food from a coffee shop whilst dissociated: I forgot all the names of the bagels. She asked me what I wanted, I just pointed. I took a white paper bag, unsure if it was mine. I stared at all the strangers around me, separated inside their warm reality of conversation and coffee. I pushed out the door, shuffled back into my car of silence, my notes. The bagel was hard to swallow . . .. (Miller, 2019, p. 159) In this account, Miller depicts how in her dissociated state she lost the ability to speak, swallow, and move with ease. She experienced disorientation and a lack of sense of ownership in a quotidian setting which previously would have been unproblematically encountered, in such a way that sharply coincided with her felt detachment from the external world and those inhabiting it. Indeed, her use of the word “reality” to describe the other patrons’ experience of the coffee shop suggest that Miller, in contrast, experiences the world, and herself, as distinctly unreal. Phenomenologically speaking, posttraumatic dissociation may be construed in terms of embodiment and according to its implications for the subjective, lived body (being a body) and the objective, corporeal body (having a body). It is a phenomenon in which the intrinsic tension between the two is made especially apparent, for whilst dissociative symptoms entail experiential alterations at both levels, it is the disrupted relation between the two that ultimately gives rise to profound self-alienation. On this basis, we argue that where trauma disrupts the ordinary experience of the lived body, a diminished subjectivity ensues such that the experience of the corporeal body becomes unusually and problematically dominant. This pathological imbalance, here characterized as a manifestation of the dismembered split self wherein bodily experience is incongruous with the experience of the body, is arguably most obvious in cases of depersonalization. In experiencing oneself as a passive observer – particularly in situations characterized by out-of-body experiences or related phenomena such as autoscopic hallucinations – one undergoes an involuntary perspectival shift in which the ordinary first-personal character of phenomenal consciousness is undermined. In its most extreme iteration, this may involve witnessing one’s own body as if one were entirely external to it, a manner of experiencing which radically departs from the way in which intrinsic self-reference is typically given. According to contemporary phenomenological accounts, the manner (as opposed to the content) of experience is broadly conceived as pre-reflective in nature (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2012) and underpinned by sensorimotor capacities that operate below the threshold of consciousness (Gallagher, 2005). These aspects of experience are consistent with classical PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 7 notions of the lived body, wherein one’s capacity for practical engagement with the world remains tacit and importantly connected to habitual bodily knowledge (e.g., Merleau-Ponty, 2012 [1945]). Dissociation, in suggesting disturbances in the pre-reflective capacities that characterize basic selfexperience therefore plausibly implicates a primary disturbance of the lived body (Ataria and Horotvitz (2021). Crucially, however, the disturbances occurring at this level result in a diminishment in ordinary subjectivity: the typical manner of being a body that habitually understands its worldly experience is disrupted such that it becomes increasingly inaccessible. A consequence of this loss is an increased emphasis upon the experience of the corporeal body. That is, one’s awareness of having a body takes on a newfound significance and altered phenomenal character in the wake of the diminished possibilities for the lived body. Ataria (2019) has argued that depersonalization and traumatic dissociation involve a shift in equilibrium between the lived and corporeal body on the basis that survivors’ experience of the body becomes increasingly salient as opposed to disappearing unproblematically into the background. As such, survivors tend toward experiencing the body as an object, reduced in vitality and responsiveness. Indeed, Robert Stolorow, in describing his sense of disconnection from his peers in the aftermath of emotional trauma, appeals to metaphors of this kind: Yet, as I looked around the ballroom, they all seemed like strange and alien beings to me. Or more accurately, I seemed like a strange and alien being – not of this world. The others seemed so vitalized, engaged with one another in a lively manner. I, in contrast, felt deadened and broken up, separating me forever from my friends and colleagues. (Stolorow, 2015, pp. 13–14) Drawing on Waldenfels’ notion of the split self, we suggest that the inherent tension between being a body and having a body is taken to an extreme following trauma owing to the unusually significant emphasis upon the latter. In other words, the ordinary relation between the lived and corporeal body undergoes a radical transformation, enabling a startlingly conspicuous distinction between these modes of embodiment. On Waldenfels’ account, the corporeal body is intrinsically alien; its heightened salience therefore resisting being meaningfully grasped. Dissociative symptoms are accompanied by pronounced changes in one’s bodily experiences (e.g., observing it as if from afar, undergoing sensory alterations, or feeling deadened), but are unable to be integrated into the kind of experience of the body that adapts and responds accordingly. Survivors are therefore faced with the passive experience of a body that has befallen significant harm – and in PTSD continues to relive these harms – while being unable to reconcile this into the ordinarily embodied subjective experiencing that previously characterized their life. This stark incongruity gives rise to profound self-alienation and a reduction in pre- 8 J. DOROTHY AND E. HUGHES reflective subjectivity which we suggest corresponds to feeling as if a part of oneself has died. This relation is particularly clear in the testimonies of Chanel Miller (2019) and Susan Brison (2002), who describe the experience of physical examinations following sexual assault in ways that capture both dissociative phenomena and the notion of being dead: I was nothing more than an observer, two eyes planted inside a beige cadaver with a nest of ratty brown hair. That morning, I would watch silver needles puncture my skin, bloody Q-tips emerge from between my legs, yet nothing would elicit a flinch or wince or intake of breath. My senses had shut off, my body a nerveless mannequin. All I understood was the ladies in the white coats were the ones to be trusted, so I obeyed every command, smiled when they smiled at me. (Miller, 2019, p. 8) For about an hour the two of them went over me like a piece of meat, calling out measurements of bruises and other assessments of damage as if they were performing an autopsy. This was just the first of many incidents in which I felt as if I was experiencing things posthumously. When the inconceivable happens, one starts to doubt even the most mundane, realistic perceptions. Perhaps I’m not really here, I thought, perhaps I did die in that ravine. The line between life and death, once so clear and sustaining, now seemed carelessly drawn and easily erased. (Brison, 2002, pp. 8–9) These accounts highlight the extent to which, in dissociation, the ordinarily tacit embodied engagement with the world is so far removed that one can be left with an oppressive objectification of the body and the feeling of, in at least some ways, having died. While the testimonies differ with respect to their emphasis on depersonalization and derealization, both additionally capture the extent to which a lack of agency also characterizes this phenomenon. Trauma, by its nature, involves the annihilation of one’s agency and passively enduring horrors that risk one’s life and bodily integrity. Of course, the physical examinations and medical treatment that follow can also be highly retraumatizing, and this ought to be borne in mind in reading the above accounts. But so too PTSD and the ongoing dissociative symptoms that may emerge when least expected and over which survivors have no control. In this way, the feeling that a part of oneself has died may be more overtly conceived still: that the involuntary loss of inhabiting the lived body not only results in a conspicuous corporeal body that resists meaningful integration, but is imbued with reminders of how one’s life was once under threat as a result of others’ agency. Indescribability Extraordinary and catastrophic, traumatic events are frequently indescribable, overwhelming the systems of signification and reference that cohere one’s meaningful engagement with the ordinary world (see Herman, 1992; van der Kolk & van der Hart, 1991). In his article “Narrative and Embodiment – A Scalar Approach,” Allan Køster suggests that the narratability of one’s PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 9 experiences can be conceptualized along a spectrum from the unnarratable, to the narratable, and then narrative itself (Køster, 2017). For Køster, paralyzing trauma is paradigmatic of the unnarratable, meaning that whilst “we may express fragments of these experiences through narrative, the experience as such remains ineffable and surpasses any possible, exhaustive narrative configuration and articulation” (Køster, 2017, p. 900). In his analysis of the unnarratable, Køster suggests that the unnarratable is grounded in having a body that is passively affected, whilst the narratable is grounded in being a body that actively understands. Understood according to the phenomenon of indescribability, therefore, the split self becomes a pathological fissure when the traumatic event inflicted upon the corporeal body resists narrative configuration and far exceeds the capacity of the lived body to utter, describe or narrate it. Painfully aware of this deficit or lack, the corporeal body is experienced as unbearably alien, and comes to pervade one’s existence with a sense of estrangement so profound that, as the first-person testimonies suggest, one may feel that part of oneself has died. This interpretation resonates with many first-person accounts of posttraumatic experience. Reflecting on the traumatic loss of his wife, Robert Stolorow emphasizes in Stolorow (2015) that: . . . the traumatized person cannot help but perceive aspects of existence that lie well outside the absolutized horizons of normal everydayness. It is in this sense that the worlds of traumatized persons are fundamentally incommensurable with those of others, the deep chasm in which an anguished sense of estrangement and solitude takes form. (p. 16) Exposed to inexplicable suffering that others could not fathom, Stolorow describes feeling like a stranger from another world. Disconnected from himself and from the world, Stolorow has the experience of being damaged and partially dead (Stolorow, 2015). Similarly, Susan Brison describes being unable to make sense of or explain what had happened to her after suffering a violent sexual assault. In her account, Brison suggests that trauma introduces a non-sensical, irrational entry into the sequence of events in one’s life – a “surd” – which makes it seem “impossible to carry on with the series” (Brison, 2002, p. 103). As in Stolorow’s account, the ineffability of this irregularity can effect a sense of detachment akin to a part of oneself dying. As Brison writes: Not to be heard means that the self the survivor has become does not exist for these others. Since the earlier self died, the surviving self needs to be known and acknowledged in order to exist . . . .It is not sufficient for mastering the trauma to construct a narrative of it: one must (physically, publicly) say or write (or paint or film) the narrative and others must see or hear it in order for one’s survival as an autonomous self to be complete. This reveals the extent to which the self is created and sustained by others and, thus, is able to be destroyed by them. (Brison, 2002, p. 62) 10 J. DOROTHY AND E. HUGHES In recovery, the work of posttraumatic therapeutic intervention often involves an effort to reconstruct the broken fragments of the self through narrative; reconfiguring the unnarratable into the narratable, and then the narratable into the narrative itself. Indeed, according to Judith Herman, “sharing the traumatic experience with others is a precondition for the restitution of a sense of a meaningful world” (Herman, 1992, p. 70). In so doing, one attempts to bear witness to the alterity that haunts the passive, corporeal body that one has, through recourse to the meaning and significance configured by the active, lived body that one is. And yet, whilst the trauma literature almost unanimously supports the idea that narrative coherence “enables survivors to gain more control over the traces left by trauma . . . helping the survivor to remake a self” (Brison, 2002, p. 71), the process of transforming traumatic memory into narrative is necessarily fraught. Indeed, as Brison concedes: “recovery no longer seems to consist of picking up the pieces of a shattered self (or fractured narrative). It’s facing the fact that there never was a coherent self (or story) there to begin with” (Brison, 2002, p. 116). The relation between trauma and narrative thus reveals an ambiguous tension that we suggest is inherent to the structure of the split self. As Stanghellini suggests, the encounter with alterity is what “kindles the progressive dialectics of personal identity,” whilst also being “the origin of mental symptoms” that arise as we struggle to comprehend and control it (Stanghellini, 2017, pp. 1–2). The split self means that one can never become identical with oneself, meaning that the unnarratable can never be entirely subsumed by the narratable, but remains as an incoherent excess. There is always a gap, a liability through which one is exposed to alterity, the indescribability of which can contribute to the sense that a part of oneself has died. Fragmentation and repetition of time Intricately related to the phenomena of dissociation and indescribability, it is common for traumatic events to fracture the structure of temporal experience; obliterating the “time continuum by which we hold our world together,” and thus the interrelatedness of past, present, and future (Loewald, 1980, p. 142). Robert Stolorow is emphatic: “trauma destroys time” (Stolorow, 2015, p. 17). The fragmentation of time means that, for many survivors, the capacity for recollection is frequently disrupted in the aftermath of trauma, such that the past becomes obscure and inaccessible. Correlatively, survivors often also report having difficulty projecting into the future, which becomes narrowed and foreshortened (Ratcliffe et al., 2014). With the temporal continuum destabilized, the traumatic event is frequently dissociated from the past and is instead relocated to the present, where it is spontaneously reexperienced through phenomena such as flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, nightmares or day dreams (APA, PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 11 2013). As Stolorow emphasizes, survivors become “freeze-framed into an eternal present” in which they remain “forever trapped”; subject to the endless repetition of the traumatic event (Stolorow, 2015, p. 20). Similarly, Brison suggests that in severing the past from the present, trauma induces both a “radical disruption of memory” and “an inability to envision a future” (Brison, 2002, p. 68). And unless “the traumatic episode is integrated into the survivor’s life narrative,” time shrinks, coalescing around the recurrence of the traumatic event (Brison, 2002, p. 53). Conceptualised according to the split self, we suggest the fragmentation and repetition of time reflects the diminished capacity of the lived body to organize the corporeal body into a coherent temporal structure. In ordinary, pre-reflexive experience, the embodied intentionality of internal time consciousness constitutes the unified temporal horizon of past, present and future (lived time) through which the corporeal body can be appropriated into one’s embodied engagement with the world. Like the melody which enables notes to unfold meaningfully over time, the lived body’s intentional constitution of retention, impression and protention is what unifies otherwise disjointed bodily experiences (see Husserl, 1964). In trauma, however, the lived body that one is becomes overwhelmed by the corporeal body that one has. Like discordant notes that fracture the melody that is unable to cohere them, traumatic bodily experiences fragment the temporal horizon that fails to unify them into meaningful experiences of the body. As a result, the traumatic event cannot be assigned to the past. Rather, distressing bodily memories rupture the immediate present and are made explicit in their alterity and alienness. Decoupled from the structure of time, the traumatic event may come to feel as though it is timeless, overwhelming the survivor who, in an attempt to regain control over time becomes “stuck in an eternal compulsion to repeat” (Mezzalira, 2021, p. 46). Such repetitions often take place at a somatosensory level, including somatic sensations as part of flashbacks or behavioral reenactment (van der Kolk & van der Hart, 1991), emphasizing the embodied nature of such difficulties. This fragmentation and repetition of time is integrally related to both dissociation and indescribability, and the decoupling from lived time can reinforce the sense that part of oneself has died.4 As Stolorow stresses, the annihilation of connectedness between past, present and future “fractures one’s sense of unitary selfhood” (Stolorow, 2015, p. 20). In so doing, it reinforces the posttraumatic experiences of estrangement, depersonalization and derealization; the collapse of meaning; and the inability to sequence discrete experiences into a coherent narrative (Auerbach, 2014, p. 212). Trauma dismantles time and, in so doing, compounds the destabilization 12 J. DOROTHY AND E. HUGHES of the unified structure of the self. As Selene Mezzalira writes (Mezzalira, 2021): . . .if the ecstatic unity of temporality is what unifies experience, then the traumatized subject becomes fragmented into pieces that are then hard to bring back together. In this sense, by altering the structure and unity of temporality, trauma disrupts at the same time the subject’s understanding of his or her Self. The fragmentation of one’s being-in-time can often go hand in hand with dissociation. (p. 9) Alienated from oneself, the fragmentation of time and the endless repetition of the traumatic event also leaves one alienated from others. As Stolorow writes: Because trauma so profoundly alters the universal or shared structure of temporality, the traumatized person . . . quite literally lives in another kind of reality, an experiential world incommensurable with those of others. This felt incommensurability, in turn, contributes to the sense of alienation and estrangement from other human beings that typically haunts the traumatized person. Torn from the communal fabric of being-intime, trauma remains insulated from human dialogue. (Stolorow, 2015, p. 20) Confined to an eternal present in which the traumatic event is endlessly repeated, estranged from themselves and from others, survivors may be desynchronized from lived time in a way that compounds the sense that part of oneself has died. Exploiting the liability of the split self to a pathological degree, we have suggested that the traumatic phenomena of dissociation, indescribability and the fragmentation and repetition of time can each contribute to the feeling that part of oneself has died. The question arises as to whether or not this dissociated, unnarratable, compulsively repeated part of oneself might ever be reintegrated or whether it is more desirable that it be relinquished. In what follows, we consider an alternative: that an intrapersonal relationship between parts lost and living might be negotiated over time. This consideration is motivated by the fact that the common therapeutic emphasis upon fully integrating the self or overcoming trauma can risk further alienating survivors, who may not feel that such a goal is possible and/or desirable. In light of the profound grief that survivors frequently experience when they feel that a part of themselves has died, we turn to the bereavement literature. In particular, we consider whether an appropriation of the continuing bonds framework might be a helpful way through which to consider this ongoing intrasubjective relation between the part of oneself that has died and the part of oneself that continues to endure in the aftermath of trauma. Continuing bonds and the death of the self Survivors of trauma often express profound feelings of grief. In Lillian Wilde’s (2022) phenomenological analysis of posttraumatic experience, PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 13 bereavement grief is in some respects considered analogous to trauma survivors’ experience, with one participant describing their trauma as enabling them to “relate to others [sic] grief and pain very well” (p. 101). Indeed, Herman (1992), in her three-stage model of trauma recovery, characterizes the second stage as remembrance and mourning. She describes this “descent into mourning” as a “surrender to tears that are endless” (p. 195), which, as with bereavement grief, is acutely painful and of no fixed length. Although Herman considers the objects of traumatic loss to be aspects such as internal psychological structures, secure attachments with others, and bodily integrity, we suggest that the feeling of having lost a part of oneself may be similarly mourned. Thus, whilst the bereavement literature is concerned with experiences of grief over the death of another, we want to consider whether it might also be useful in understanding experiences of grief over the death of part of oneself. In particular, we want to consider the debate, prominent in the bereavement literature, between the “breaking bonds” and “continuing bonds” approaches. Throughout the twentieth century, the bereavement literature has been dominated by the “breaking bonds” approach to grief. This paradigm understands grief as a time-delimited process, the objective of which is to effectively relinquish the intersubjective relationship between the mourner and the deceased, in order that one might be then be free to form new attachments. Here, failure to disengage from the dead results in grief that is complicated, prolonged, unresolved, and thus, pathological (Bowlby, 1980; Freud, 2005; Kübler-Ross, 2009; Parkes, 2010). By contrast, the continuing bonds approach to grief, put forward by psychologists such as Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman, Steven Nickman, and Edith Steffen, has become a prominent alternative (Klass & Steffen, 2017; Klass et al., 1996). This view argues that the intersubjective relation between the mourner and the deceased can and often does endure indefinitely after death in meaningful and important ways. Klass and colleagues write: “we propose that rather than emphasizing letting go, the emphasis should be on negotiating and renegotiating the meaning of the loss over time. While the death is permanent and unchanging, the process is not” (Klass et al., 1996, p. 19). This process of negotiating and renegotiating the meaning of the loss can involve talking to the deceased, dreaming of the deceased, and sense of presence experiences, as well as telling stories about the deceased and keeping significant objects or artifacts. For many mourners: “memorializing, remembering, knowing the person who has died, and allowing them to influence the present are active processes that seem to continue throughout the survivor’s entire life” (Klass et al., 1996, p. 17). In negotiating and renegotiating the loss through the form of a continuing bond, the bereaved oscillates between “loss-oriented” processes and “restoration-oriented” processes; gradually “relearning the world” in a way 14 J. DOROTHY AND E. HUGHES that might accommodate an ongoing relationship with their deceased loved one (See Attig, 2011; Stroebe & Schut, 1999). A bereavement model that has been applied to the ongoing intersubjective relationship between the mourner and the deceased, we want to consider whether the continuing bonds model might in theory be appropriated to the death of the self in posttraumatic experience, to incorporate the intrasubjective relationship between the part of oneself that has died and the part of oneself that continues to endure. We suggest that, on this model, the part of oneself who has died need not be relinquished in order to somehow accept or adapt to one’s newfound reality. Indeed, doing so may increase feelings of despair, resentment and grief. The notion that one must irrevocably cut ties with one’s previous self is also likely to negatively impact upon dissociative symptoms owing to becoming again overwhelmed by one’s lack of agency. Rather than severing ties to the person one was prior to the traumatic event, therefore, one might instead continue to find ways of relating to the lost part through the process of negotiation and renegotiation. In practice, this may include (but is not limited to) acts such as: looking at old photographs of oneself; engaging with artifacts which represent significant aspects of oneself that have since been affected by PTSD (e.g., objects relating to hobbies one no longer participates in or a career that one has left); actively reflecting upon the aspects of oneself which have been lost (e.g., calling to mind memories in which one previously felt socially connected, enjoyed physical intimacy, or behaved with self-confidence); telling stories about times before the trauma; dreaming from the perspective of oneself prior to the trauma; writing letters or journal entries directed toward the lost part of oneself; and considering one’s previous relationship to one’s body (e.g., prior to physical changes such as scarring, injury, chronic pain, or somatic manifestations of PTSD). Undoubtedly, such practices will involve a vast range of emotional responses, including those which may be painful or difficult to endure. At times, engaging in such acts could risk being retraumatizing or worsening feelings of grief, in a manner also applicable to interpersonal grief. As such, it is important to note that, as with bereavement, these processes are far from linear and can oscillate between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented practices. Building a relationship between one’s surviving and lost selves is likely to be a lifelong endeavor, best undertaken with the support of significant others or within trauma-informed psychotherapy. Still, over time, careful negotiating and renegotiating with the lost part of oneself may come to provide benefits, akin to how the construction of a trauma narrative can oftentimes be distressing but also offer support within the context of Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) and survivor groups (Herman, 1992; Schauer et al., 2005). Notably, however, such practices need not necessarily emphasize the traumatic event itself: rather, its implications and one’s PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 15 experience of oneself, parts lost and surviving. Negotiating practices may therefore also remain suitable for survivors who find that narrativizing the event serves to embed distressing memories and increase forced avoidance, and for whom approaches such as trauma-informed cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) are indicated. Appropriating the continuing bonds model to trauma may be specifically helpful in its emphasis upon one’s relation to the part that has been lost, and from which meaning may eventually be drawn. We do not suggest that meaning may be drawn from the traumatic event itself, which is arguably unlikely, if not impossible. Rather, we propose that in the development of an ongoing intrapersonal relationship between conspicuously contrasting aspects of self, one might gradually build the self-compassion and sense of agency required to best adapt to troubling circumstances. Such processes are particularly important for survivors who feel that the part of oneself who has died is irrecoverably lost. In bereavement, it is inevitable the death of the significant other is permanent. We suggest that, in trauma, there is also a strong possibility that the part of oneself which has died may never be revived and unified with the surviving part in a way that precisely mirrors life pre-trauma. It is common for survivors to report that, on some level, they have been fundamentally changed by their trauma and will never be the same again. In such cases, particularly where dissociation, indescribability and fragmentation of time present as ongoing, and PTSD symptoms appear intractable in spite of medical or psychotherapeutic interventions, how one relates to the loss of part of oneself has significant ramifications. Where one is overcome by grief, regret, and longing, or conversely strives relentlessly to recapture what has been lost, the chasm between past and present is likely to feel ever more convoluted. In so doing, symptom reduction may seem a more distant possibility, and one’s sense of timelessness and dissociation may increase. Ultimately, this may impede opportunities for the development of the personal understanding required to begin adapting to or reconciling the split self. In the fullness of time and with a meaningful intrapersonal relationship between one’s dead and surviving self, it may not even be straightforwardly desirable to return to what has been lost. Many survivors in the long-term go on to express a feeling of having learned valuable things about themselves or the world alongside the distress experienced. The death of oneself in trauma may be experienced so profoundly that the surviving part may have a newfound sense of resilience, empathy, or motivation for seeking justice or connection with other survivors (Brison, 2002; Herman, 1992). As Brison states, “it’s an honor to be a survivor. Although it’s not the sort of thing I can put on my résumé, it’s the accomplishment of which I’m most proud” (p. 20). Such sentiments are hard-won given the enormous costs of trauma, 16 J. DOROTHY AND E. HUGHES and they are likely to be possible only where guilt, self-blame, and selfloathing can be kept at bay. Continuing to relate to the part of oneself that died as a result of the trauma may be one important way in which to facilitate a more compassionate attitude toward oneself, by recalling fondness for who one was and what remains, alongside the recognition and acceptance of sudden and dramatic change. Indeed, instilling compassion in this way is not dissimilar to therapeutic interventions encouraging kindness toward one’s inner child in cases of complex developmental trauma (e.g., Schwartz & Sweezy, 2019).5 Crucially, engaging in practices that facilitate an intrapersonal relationship between parts lost and living demonstrate agency on the part of the survivor, oscillating between lossoriented processes and restoration-oriented processes as the survivor works to relearn the world after loss. Recalling and memorializing the part that has been lost is an active process, one which creates an ongoing bond that the surviving part may carry with them into their future in whichever way suits them best. Indeed, who one was can influence who one can newly become. Brison recalls a survivor group facilitator pointing out that “When your life is shattered, you’re forced to pick up the pieces, and you have a chance to stop and examine them. You can say ‘I don’t want this one anymore’ or ‘I think I’ll work on that one’” (2002, p. 20). An ongoing connection with the lost part of oneself enables the opportunity to reflect upon the various aspects of one’s life as they once were and make decisions about which may or may not continue to serve. This, alongside self-compassion and acceptance, may encourage healing and the restoration of autonomy, as opposed to self-destruction or withdrawal from others that may further traumatize. The approach compliments Waldenfels’ conception of the split self in its emphasis upon co-existing with separation rather than wholly overcoming it. Given that the split self is fundamental to human experience, one’s self can never be wholly grasped or unified. Rather, one might simply hope for the distinction between having and being a body to remain largely implicit, such that one may practically engage with the world as effortlessly as possible. Where this distinction is problematized by trauma, the ultimate aim might be to redress the relation between these modes of embodiment so that one’s experience of oneself and the world gradually resume their subjectivity. However, while some achieve substantial recovery from PTSD – which we interpret as the alterity inherent in the split self becoming minimized, but not overcome – it is common for survivors to continue displaying symptoms in response to specific triggers (van der Kolk, 2000). Here, the notion of the split self helps characterize posttraumatic experience not as something that requires outright fixing, but as something that may be incrementally restored in a non-linear fashion owing to the continual tension between the lived and corporeal body and the inevitability of encountering traumatic reminders in the world. As such, the extent to which the gulf between the dismembered split self is bridged may prove variable across PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 17 time, underlining the importance of a flexible and adaptive understanding of parts both living and lost. Although such a view may appear pessimistic in that it does not promote a complete return to one’s prior experience of self and world, the common therapeutic emphasis upon full “integration” of the self or “overcoming” trauma can itself strike survivors as alienating given their often apparent impossibility. We suggest that for some survivors, a focus on the quality of the intrapersonal relationship between parts of themselves, dead and surviving, may offer a different kind of hope. Conclusion This article has explored what it might mean when, in the aftermath of trauma, survivors report that a part of them has died. In so doing, we have drawn upon Waldenfels’ conception of the split self as a theoretical framework. Specifically, we have suggested that the precarity inherent to having a body that is passively affected and being a body that actively understands is exploited in trauma to a pathological degree, resulting in a conspicuously fragmented self such that one experiences oneself as both living and dead. We have shown that in PTSD, this dismembered split self is made manifest across the phenomena of dissociation; indescribability; and the fragmentation and repetition of time. In dissociative responses, and particularly depersonalization, we suggested that this is apparent in the increased salience of the corporeal body that diminishes the ordinary first-personal subjectivity of experience. We then proposed that the corporeal body which passively incurs the traumatic event far exceeds the lived body’s capacity to integrate and narrativize it, a lack which is felt so pervasively that one’s corporeality is rendered alien and obscures the connection with others necessary for narrative sense-making. In turning to the fragmentation and repetition of time, we argued that reexperiencing phenomena in PTSD reflect the diminished capacity of the lived body to organize the corporeal body into a coherent temporal structure, which worsens dissociation and indescribability. Taken together, these experiential alterations result in a profound alterity within the split self that, in ordinary experience, remains implicit. This is felt so saliently by survivors of trauma that, whilst a part of the self is felt to continue and survive, another part is felt to be irredeemably lost. In considering how the dismembered split self and its associated grief might be reconciled or accommodated, we explored the bereavement literature. Specifically, we asked whether the continuing bonds paradigm might be helpfully appropriated, particularly when understood against the background of a dual-process approach to relearning the world after loss. On this model, an ongoing interpersonal relationship with the bereaved is thought to be possible via the negotiation and renegotiation of meaning through an active process of memorializing. Applied to the death of the self following 18 J. DOROTHY AND E. HUGHES trauma, we explored how survivors might helpfully develop an intrapersonal bond with the part that has been lost. Whilst this might at times be painful and best done in a trauma-informed psychotherapeutic context, we suggested that an active process of recollection might also foster agency and self-compassion, avoiding some of the risks associated with a complete relinquishment of, or relentless striving for, the past. This approach is compatible with the notion that the split self inherently resists being overcome, and that whilst it can operate more or less implicitly, there remains an ongoing vulnerability to alterity. Therefore, for survivors who feel an irrecoverable loss of self, or for whom PTSD symptoms fluctuate and continue to reappear in response to specific reminders, it may be uniquely beneficial to draw from a model of grief that does not emphasize either overcoming or relinquishment. Rather, one might develop a meaningful intrapersonal relationship between parts lost and living, one with the potential to influence how one eventually responds and adapts to their past, their trauma, and their future. Notes 1. There is a difference between the statements ‘I feel as though a part of me has died’ and ‘I feel as though I died,’ although it is ambiguous as to whether they refer to different phenomena. For the purposes of this article we take it that both statements convey the idea that something integral to who one is has been lost irrevocably, and that this loss can manifest in a number of ways. 2. Complex developmental trauma is particularly associated with Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) (van der Hart et al., 2006), across which chronic instability of self features prominently. Therapeutic interventions may herein aim towards developing a more robust sense of self, possibly for the first time in one’s life, as opposed to recapturing or mourning the aspects of oneself which were once felt to be present but since lost. 3. Here, we understand “fixation” to mean the repetitive and intrusive symptoms concerning the lived body, rather than a cognitive process in which the traumatic event is chosen as an object of conscious attention. Indeed, the diagnostic criteria of PTSD include avoidance of internal and external reminders of the event, e.g. thinking about it. 4. For detailed accounts of the relationship between temporal desynchronization and death see Hughes (2020, 2022). 5. This intrapersonal approach to trauma has applicability within the Internal Family Systems Therapy model, which focuses on the relationships between the different parts of the self, including those which have been ‘exiled’ (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2019). Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Dr Louise Richardson for her valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this article. PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 19 Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Funding The work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/T000066/1.]; White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities, a Doctoral Training Partnerships supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Notes on contributors Jake Dorothy I am a doctoral researcher in philosophy at the University of York. My thesis concerns the phenomenology of complex posttraumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), specifically the impact of complex trauma upon selfhood. I work primarily within the phenomenological tradition, with an emphasis upon its interdisciplinary applications and empirical research. My interests lie more broadly within the philosophy of psychiatry, medicine, and psychology. Emily Hughes I am a postdoctoral research associate in philosophy at the University of York working on the AHRC-funded project “Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience.” I completed my PhD at the University of New South Wales. My research is situated in the intersection between existential phenomenology and the philosophy of psychiatry and psychology, with a particular focus on phenomenological interpretations of affect and the way in which emotions modify temporal, spatial and bodily experience. ORCID Jake Dorothy http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7829-8498 References American Psychiatric Association [APA]. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Publishing. Ataria, Y. (2019). When the body stands in the way: Complex posttraumatic stress disorder, depersonalisation, and schizophrenia. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 26(1), 19–31. https://doi.org/10.1353/ppp.2019.0001 Ataria, Y., & Horotvitz, O. (2021). 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