An intersubjective conception of complex trauma in the framework of the semiotic function of affectivity

The current conception of complex trauma is based on an implicit materialized, orthopedic conception of the mind. Just as in osteoporosis, chronic damage to the bone can cause it to fracture, so the self can be chronically damaged by repeated damaging events inflicted upon it by the relational environment. In this paper, we first look at the severe problems of this conception, and subsequently argue for a different conception - an intersubjective conception of complex traumain the framework of the semiotic function of affectivity - that may help us overcome problems. We propose to conceive complex trauma as an adaptation imposed on the mind by a relational environment endowed with limited affective complexity, to which the mind responds by reducing its affective complexity to varying degrees and adopting a variably rigid, affectively hyper-simplified “successful” form of interpretation of reality. In this perspective, complex trauma would be a ubiquitous form of adaptation that takes on the appearance of ways of being in the world and in relationships, if not the only possible form of existence, which often manifest as various forms of psychopathology.