When the body becomes the enemy: Disownership toward the Body

This article suggests that, after severe and prolonged trauma (which, for the sake of simplicity, is referred to herein as trauma type II), cognitive resources are depleted and the victim is completely dependent on her persecutor. This, in turn, may cause the victim to develop a feeling of disownership toward the entire body. The central claim made herein is that when disownership toward the entire body becomes fixed/permanent this can lead, in the long term, to complex posttraumatic stress disorder C-PTSD, a dissociative subtype of PTSD, and to self-harming behavior. The paper examines this issue from theoretical and phenomenological perspectives.