"Big chunks of blank memory": complex trauma and dissociative body memory.
Medicine, health care, and philosophy May 3, 2025 Jake Dorothy
Survivors of complex trauma often experience memory blanks that are disturbingly felt even though they cannot recall the missing events. Drawing on survivor testimonies and phenomenological methods, the author argues that these gaps are accompanied by a non-conceptual body memory that lacks propositional content and remains uncontextualized. This dissociative body memory has two features: habitual dissociation and protentive salience. The perceived gap is actually a partial gap involving pre-reflective remembering not recognized as such. Dissociative body memory prevents narrative integration, sustaining a sense of foreboding about the past. Clinically, what survivors experience as forgotten must not be disregarded; theoretically, this may be a characteristic of complex PTSD.