Article on Enactive Trauma Theory and Practice

Nijenhuis, E.R.S. (2017). From Passion to Action: A Synopsis of the Theory and Practice of Enactive Trauma Therapy. Frontiers in the Psychotherapy of Trauma and Dissociation, 1(1):65–89, 2017.

Abstract
Enactive trauma therapy is influenced by the philosophy of enactivism, among other sources of inspiration. Enactivism holds that, like anyone else, traumatized individuals (1) are embodied and embedded in their environment; (2) are goal-oriented human organism-environment systems that primarily long and strive to preserve their existence; (3) are primordial affective systems oriented toward making sense of things; (4) bring forth, i.e., enact a mental and phenomenal self, world, and self-as-a-part-of-this-world, and (5) primarily gain knowledge on the basis of their goal-oriented sensorimotor and affect-laden actions. In this light, trauma is an injury to a whole human organism-environment system. Its core is a lack of integration of various dynamic modes of longing and striving: those that concern longings to live daily life and to avoid perceived threat (notably including traumatic memories) and those that involve longings to defend the integrity of the body. In dissociative disorders, these modes take the form of two or more conscious and self-conscious dissociative subsystems that enact their own mental and phenomenal self, world, and self-as-a-part-of-this-world. Enactive trauma therapy is the endeavor to mend the integrative deficit. It is comprised of the patient and the therapist as two organism-environment systems that enact a common world and that long and strive to achieve common results. Together they spawn new actions and meaning. Their collaboration and communication resembles dancing: It takes pacing, attunement, timing, a sensitivity to balance, movement and rhythm, and courage, as well as the ability and willingness to follow and lead. I propose and illustrate several principles for the progression from passions to actions. Individuals engage in passions and experience sorrow the more they are mostly acted on, that is, influenced by external causes. The more they are their own master, the more they act, and the more they act, the more they experience joy.