Philosophers, notably including Aristotle, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Ruyer, held that we, like every form of life, essentially involve a will to be, to become what it can be, and to preserve their existence. We long and strive to get what we can use, to remove what harms us, and to disregard what is trivial. We are thereby intrinsically intertwined with our umwelt, with the environment as we experience and know it. Our umwelt affects us; we affect our umwelt. In other words, we are ecological systems.

We include many longings and strivings (e.g., breathing, eating, gaining recognition, sampling knowledge). Life is smooth when they support each other. The going gets rough when they are contradictory. As children, we naturally long and strive to attach to our parents or other primary caregivers. We no less long and strive to defend ourselves against harm. Now, what to do when the ones we need most neglect, maltreat or abuse us? We must attach but attaching is dangerous. We must defend but detaching is perilous as well. One way out is to divide ourselves in two (or more) ecological subsystems or dissociative agents. As one agent, we yearn to attach to the ones we need. As another agent, we urge to defend ourselves against them. The division may help us to survive chronic traumatization but leaves us tossing and turning between radically opposite longings and strivings. This presentation will address how trauma therapy is the effort to overcome the gruesome conflict.