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Fernando (2009, 2012a, b) used the ego psychological differentiation of various ego functions, to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of post-traumatic mental functioning . It had been said that posttraumatic memories are concrete and unsymbolized, but Fernando found that in order to have a regular experience, a good deal of processing, comparing the incoming sensory experience with expectations, and construction of the experience, has to take place. This occurs prior to any symbolization or attachment of the experience to language. Likely, it is this first order construction of the present moment that is aborted, or at least stopped at some point before completion, in trauma. These posttraumatic memories have the basic quality of memories of being retained over time, but in other ways behave more like a future or present experience, being always about to happen, and at times happening in flashbacks, but never being in the past as a true memory. Fernando coined the term “ zero process ” for this form of mental functioning, asserting that it should be distinguished from both the primary and the secondary processes. For instance the “timelessness” of the zero process has a much more frozen, on or off quality, compared to the ceaseless movement, but lack of wearing away over time, of the contents of the primary process. When Richard Kluft (1993) states that Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is a “multiple reality disorder”, he is describing a situation in which the zero process dominates the clinical picture. The contents of the zero process have not yet been turned into regular memories, but exist as a perpetual present. The ideas about the zero process may be of help in understanding not just DID, but many other aspects of trauma. For instance, the power of intergenerational transmission seems much less mysterious if we understand that the traumatized person is living in a number of realities, and their child is merely responding to this at the emotional and unconscious level. What is transmitted are not memories, but realities. At the clinical level, certain technical innovations seem obvious. For instance, when a traumatized patient says that she still can’t convince herself that the trauma actually happened, her analyst can observe that maybe this is because ‘her trauma has not yet happened’. It still lives in her future, waiting to happen. It is the analyst’s role to help, gently, to make this terrible future happen, and then become part of the past. III. Bg. Interdisciplinary Studies: Example of Ego Psychology & Art and Creativity & Neuroscience There is a wide acknowledgement within the contemporary Freudian discourse (not only in North America) that if the differences between the fields of inquiry with their different methodologies are recognized and not confused, the interdisciplinary connections, applications, and cross-fertilization between psychoanalysis and other fields of inquiry can lead to fertile analogies and new hypotheses. Such was the method of Freud’s theorizing process. In order to continue his theoretical progress, Freud called upon other fields, such as biological sciences, anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, art, literature, etc., and he based himself on their analogical link without confusing them. Among many analysts who followed Freud, Erikson, Hartmann, Kris and Bellak in the exploration of complex role of regression, destruction, transgression, and conflict in generating growth, expansion, and creativity , in the context of the arts, sciences and culture at
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