BRIDGING THE GREAT DIVIDE: MODIFYING TRAUMATIC MEMORIES

Authors

  • Mariette van der Merwe Department of Social Work, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15270/45-3-205

Abstract

Social workers and other professionals in South Africa are constantly challenged by the impactof extreme traumatic events on many of their client populations. This article focuses on aspecific area of post-trauma intervention, namely understanding and actively working withtraumatic memories. The underlying theoretical paradigm is the constructive narrativeperspective (Meichenbaum, 1994) with a focus on more than mere information processing.Account-making and restorying traumatic material into a verbal narrative is core work.Meichenbaum (1994:103) rightly postulates: “People make meaning of their lives byorganizing key events into stories which they incorporate into a larger life narrative.” Theprocess of meaning-making incorporates each individual’s subjective interpretation of events.Psycho-education is a central part of the process to empower traumatised persons to initiate theprocess of memory shifting

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Published

2014-06-18

How to Cite

van der Merwe, M. (2014). BRIDGING THE GREAT DIVIDE: MODIFYING TRAUMATIC MEMORIES. Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk, 45(3). https://doi.org/10.15270/45-3-205

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Articles