Trauma Trauma Theory

These same aspects are then altered and potentially strengthened as an individual heals from a traumatic event. In this way the theory provides a template for identifying both damage and growth after trauma. Trauma theory integrates psychoanalytic theory with constructivist thinking, social learning theory, and cognitive developmental theory and emphasizes the influence of the individual's developmental, social, and cultural contexts. This theory looks at an individual’s adaptation to trauma as an interaction between their personality and personal history and the traumatic event and its context, within the social and cultural contexts for the event and its aftermath. The underlying constructivist assumption is that individuals construct and
construe their own realities. The clinical implication is that the meaning of the traumatic event is in the survivor's experience of it.