Wounded by Reality: Understanding and Treating Adult Onset Trauma

The culmination of three decades of studying and treating survivors of adult onset trauma, Wounded by Reality is the first systematic attempt to differentiate adult onset trauma from childhood trauma, with which it is frequently confused.

When catastrophic events overtake adult lives, they often scar the psyche in ways that psychodynamically oriented clinicians struggle to understand. For Ghislaine Boulanger, the enormous challenge of working with these patients is unsurprising. Survivors of major catastrophe, whether a natural disaster, a life-threatening assault, a serious accident, or an act of terrorism, experience a near-fatal disruption of fundamental aspects of self experience. The sense of agency, of affectivity, of bodily integrity, the capacity for self-reflection, the sense of time, and the ability to relate to others - all are called into question.

Ghislaine Boulanger is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and a member of the Relational faculty at New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Her interest in adult onset trauma began when she joined a congressionally mandated research team doing an epidemiological study of Vietnam veterans. Her findings about the long-term consequences of surviving violence in adulthood have led to a career of research, writing, and teaching about the psychodynamic causes and consequences of adult onset trauma.