Childhood Conflict

Written by Nancy Cole , Psy.D., Clinical Director, The Center for Trauma and Dissociation Newsletter (Oct. 1995, Vol. 3,N

"Child abuse creates a fundamental contradiction for the child. . . . Let me try to capture the essence of this contradiction by juxtapositioning a few of the words of childhood with the words of trauma: mommy/pain; daddy/sex; childhood/torture; play time/terror. Needless to say, the list could go on and on. Developmentally, the child strives to assimilate the violently contradictory ideas into one schema. But in the case of child abuse, the only scheme available is one that denies reality. The child must simultaneously know and not know. She is forced, in order to preserve her primary relationships, to take what doesn’t make sense and then make it make sense. It is not a possible task-not if the child adheres to normal cognitive operations. It becomes possible only through strenuous denial, dissociation, and splitting. . . . She [then] finds she cannot solve problems because she has so perfectly mastered her capacity to deny problems.”