Was it Freud, Horowitz, Foa, Resick, Shapiro, Brewin or Ehlers? Arrested information processing has long been held as pivotal in the development of PTSD, but in my Workshop, ‘CBT for PTSD and Beyond’ to be delivered at the Lakeside Centre, Crosby, Liverpool on October 4th 2018 under the auspices of Merseyside BABCP I question this.
There is also a paper ‘PTSD An Alternative Paradigm’ in submission.
Dr Mike Scott
Consider that only a small minority of those experiencing an extreme trauma experience PTSD, consider also that most people experiencing such an event try not to think/talk about it, is it really plausible that PTSD arises from arrested information processing? If not why are we subjecting clients and therapists to a painful procedure, trauma focussed CBT/EMDR, that they are likely to default from?
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It is true that with trauma focussed CBT or EMDR about 50% of those undergoing these treatments in randomised controlled trials fully recover from PTSD, nevertheless compliance in routine practise appears much less . But it is possible that to the extent that these treatments do work they do so for reasons other than achieving ‘full processing of the traumatic memory’. More plausibly as a side effect of these interventions they learn experientially that the ‘war zone’ map of their personal world that they have employed since the trauma, leads nowhere and they revert to a pre-trauma map. Oftentimes the prime concern of a victim is not what did happen but what could/should have happened i.e it is not the trauma per se.
Dr Mike Scott