BRIDGING THE GREAT DIVIDE: MODIFYING TRAUMATIC MEMORIES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15270/45-3-205Abstract
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 a
specific area of post-trauma intervention, namely understanding and actively working with
traumatic memories. The underlying theoretical paradigm is the constructive narrative
perspective (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 by
organizing key events into stories which they incorporate into a larger life narrative.” The
process 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 the
process of memory shifting
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