Available online at:
https://cc.arcabc.ca/islandora/object/cc%3Apsycjournal

J Camosun Psyc Res. (2025). Vol. 7(1), pp. 55-61.
Submitted Fall 2024; accepted May 2025.

Trauma-Informed Approach: Who Made It Happen, Why
It Was Needed, and How It Was Shaped.
Authors: Marie-Lou Gendron*
Supervising Instructor: Randal Tonks, Psyc 210 (“History of Psychology”)
Department of Psychology, Camosun College, 3100 Foul Bay Road, Victoria, BC, Canada V8P 5J2
*Corresponding author email: marielougendron@gmail.com

1. Introduction
What would you prefer: being asked
‘What is wrong with you?’ or ‘What is
happening?’. If you preferred the latter, you
have chosen a Trauma-Informed question.
Given today’s multicultural and
multigenerational society in which
psychological trauma survivors abound,
Elliot et al. (2005) inform us that the
Trauma-Informed Approach aspires to
upgrade all service delivery (medical,
community, business, education, etc.) to
neuroscience knowledge, on the assumption
that service providers can benefit from
understanding trauma’s impacts on nervous
systems, behaviors, and relationships, while
becoming aware of their own roles in
creating psychologically safe environments
that promote autonomy and respect client
agency. Switching from asking ‘What is
wrong with you?’ with a desire to fix, to
asking ‘What is happening?’, followed by
attentive listening paired with an open mind,
is not just a mere vocabulary change, it is a
paradigm shift from natural sciences towards
human sciences. See Appendix A for a reallife example.
The author of this paper aims to
understand how the Trauma-Informed
Approach developed, and why it was

needed, by exploring two men who have
experienced, researched and promoted that
paradigm shift: Carl Rogers and Bessel Van
der Kolk. This paper will cover their sociohistoric context, their professional activities
related to this approach, who inspired them,
what they chose to do differently, and why.
Then, this author will conclude by analyzing
what they had in common, and whether the
Trauma-Informed approach is still relevant
today.
2. Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
As Evans (1975) writes, Rogers began as
a child behavior therapist in the mid 1920’s,
and quickly became critical of short-term
behavior-shaping via sole environment
manipulation, preferring to nurture whole
individual potential by getting to know the
kids personally. During the mid-1940’s,
while at the University of Chicago, he
scientifically researched the efficiency of
diverse psychotherapy methods, which led
him to prove that psychologists could do
psychotherapy too, and not just
psychiatrists; this had never been
demonstrated before (APA(a), 2024).
Interestingly, this happened during an
important historic period that saw the defeat
of eugenics-loving Nazi Germany, who
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twisted Darwin’s theories by applying
artificial selection to humans while
committing holocaust in the process.
Surprisingly, in 1946, after the war had
ended, the American Psychological
Association elected eugenics specialist
Henry E. Garrett for president (APA(b),
2024). This is revealing of eugenics’
influences in psychology at the time. Thus,
when Carl Rogers obtained the APA
presidency in 1947, a 180 degrees shift
occurred towards humanistic approaches
(APA(a), 2024). According to Evans (1975),
once president, Rogers advocated for client
agency and confidentiality, and opened the
APA to clinical psychologists, thereby
definitely defeating psychiatry’s monopoly
on the matter. Later, in the 1960, 70’s and
80’s, amongst many other projects, he
founded the Center for Studies of the Person
to investigate individual potential, and
facilitated encounter groups in polarized
communities worldwide until his passing in
1987 (APA(a), 2024). Throughout his long
career, Rogers stayed true to his first
humanist hunches, and dedicated himself to
understanding what beneficial conditions
could unleash the untapped potential of
human beings.
Evans (1975) writes that Rogers
popularized ‘client-centered’ psychotherapy,
promoting the ideas of unconditional
positive regard, acceptance, understanding,
and safety in relationships, having observed
that only with these favorable conditions
could human beings access their own free
will, sense of responsibility, flexibility, and
creativity, all of which was needed to solve
their own problems and to flourish.
Moreover, Rogers was concerned by the
detrimental impact of ethics based on
absolutes of right or wrong, preferring
instead a pragmatic “… situational ethics
where right and wrong are relative to the
situation …” (Evans, 1975, p.101). Through

his American lens, he judged situational
ethics more adequate for fast-shifting
modern times compared to the simpler,
traditionally-comforting absolutes of right
versus wrong. Furthermore, because Rogers
refused to become an idol, and to rigidly
hold on to his ideas, his general guidelines
could be adapted by diverse groups
worldwide, and a vast number of people
from all walks of life could learn the art of
improving themselves and their
relationships.
Philosophy-wise, Evans (1975)
writes that Rogers was influenced by “…
Otto Rank’s preoccupation with the ‘will’
[namely] how the development of autonomy
introduced a type of self-determinism that
Freud did not emphasize”, hence he took a
step away from Freudian thought early on
(p. xxiv). Moreover, Evans adds that selfdeterminism was aligned with another of
Roger’s influences: Kierkegaard’s
existentialism. For Kierkegaard, humans
were “… understood as ‘spirit’, and that
spirit must become itself through a process
[of] on-going synthesis of contrasting
fundamental characteristics: the finite and
the infinite, the temporal and the eternal; the
necessary and the possible” (Lippitt et al.,
2024, para 21). Therefore, by understanding
and allowing the conditions for this dynamic
process of becoming to unfold, Rogers
clearly applied Kierkegaard. Yet, when
interviewed by Evans (1975), he claimed
that above all else, it is his psychotherapy
patients, group therapy participants, students
and colleagues that taught him most about
what becoming human entails.
Standing out from many of his
contemporaries and predecessors, Rogers
criticized the positivist medical model. As
Evans (1975) writes, he found it too
“cynical, negative and externally
determined”, and instead believed that the
mental health practitioner’s role in society
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was to “… improve the intellectual and
psychological health of its members [via]
the development of an optimistic, selfdetermined, positive philosophy about
human existence …” (p. xxvi). Furthermore,
Evans notes that the popularity of Skinner’s
reward-punishment operant conditioning
from the 1950’s to the 1980’s may have
sparked some psychological reactance in
Rogers, his uneasiness with strict behaviorist
views of fueling the development of his nondirective style. Thus, Rogers doubted that
asking ‘What is wrong with you?’ was really
suited for human affairs as he was skeptic of
Skinner’s linear worldviews. He preferred
systems-thinking, as he observed that one
presenting issue may hide many inter-related
dynamics, and he dared to take the
hermeneutical lens that looked deeper into
how the therapist’s own attitudes could
unknowingly contribute to patient’s
outcomes. To quote Rogers himself during
Evan’s interview in 1975: “… the basic
difference between a behavioristic and a
humanistic approach to human beings is a
philosophical choice” (p.131). Thus, Rogers
proposed to raise awareness about which
paradigm practitioners adopted, and how
their philosophical choice guided their
professional actions. While the positivist
model raised doctors onto pedestals, Rogers
stepped down to meet people where they
were are at, admitting not knowing
everything, and being all ears for the clients
who were the true experts of themselves.
Although often being the odd one in the
room, Rogers wasn’t entirely alone, as we
shall see next.
3. Bessel Van der Kolk (1943 –)
In his book The Body Keeps the Score
(2014), Van der Kolk writes that he learned
psychiatry at Harvard, and started working
at the Boston Veterans Administration

Clinic (VA) in 1978, only five years after
US troops left Vietnam, and almost three
decades in the deinstitutionalization
movement. He spent most of his career
understanding the impacts of psychological
trauma on the human brain, nervous system,
psyche, and relationships, and exploring
possible treatments. He supported the
introduction of the previously dismissed
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
diagnostic in the DSM-III, he researched
both conventional (medications and
psychotherapy) and alternative treatments
(yoga, theater, neuro-feedback, etc.) for
trauma survivors, he studied childhood
developmental issues, he founded the
Trauma Centre where he worked for almost
40 years while also teaching psychiatry at
Boston University. According to his website
(2020), after a period of internal political
turmoil, Van der Kolk transferred over to the
Trauma Research Foundation where he still
works today.
Van der Kolk (2014) writes that he was
inspired by Pavlov’s often-forgotten
research on the Reflex of Purpose, which
reports that humans have a fundamental
drive for purpose, for organizing around
meaning, and for utilizing emotions to ignite
a self-determined momentum. Also, he
reports having enjoyed Darwin’s overlooked
work The Expression of Emotions, which
describes body-brain bidirectional systems
during moments of emotional excitation.
Eventually, that Darwinian hunch evolved
into Porge’s Polyvagal theory, another of
Van der Kolk’s all-time favorites, which
revealed how being seen and heard relaxes
and reassures, or how being ignored or
dismissed enrages and discourages, therefore
highlighting the importance of quality
relationships on the health of our nervous
systems. Furthermore, Maier and Seligman’s
(1967) animal research on inescapable shock
was a revelation because, as Van der Kolk
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(2014) himself reports, it confirmed that the
development of learned helplessness indeed
happens when one cannot escape a traumatic
experience, and it validated that stress and
on-guard attitudes persist long after the
threat has passed. Therefore, as Rogers
suggested, providing conditions where
safety, agency and autonomy reigns makes
total sense. Van der Kolk reports to have
creatively synthesized all of the above,
realizing that psychological trauma affects
people from all ages and walks of life, and
that public policy changes at the federal
level could have a much larger impact on
society than one-on-one therapy. So, in
1998, after decades of lobbying, the US
Senate passed a Van der Kolk-inspired bill
to create the National Child Traumatic
Stress Network (NCTSN), connecting
hundreds of diverse organizations offering
Trauma-Informed care for families,
psychological first aid trainings, and
multiculturally adapted local mental health
supports. No doubt, Rogers would have
wholeheartedly applauded this.
As he himself writes, Van der Kolk
(2014) dared to do things differently right
from his first study in the late 1970’s, by
asking Vietnam veterans the TraumaInformed question: ‘What happened?’.
Listening to veteran’s stories simply had
never been done so systematically in
scientific research. What prompted him to
design this study was Kardiner’s first-hand
accounts of World War I’s traumatized
soldiers in his book Traumatic Neuroses of
War (1941), but even more so his own and
psychiatry’s sheer ignorance of the subject;
a 40 year-gap in medical literature that he
resolved to fill with new research.
However, Van der Kolk soon discovered
that trauma was taboo, as he writes facing
rejection on his following research grant
proposal because the VA did not find PTSD
relevant for its organization (2014).

Moreover, during the pharmacological
revolution of the 1980-90’s, while teaching
psychopharmacology at the Massachusetts
Mental Health Center, Van der Kolk writes
of humbly realizing that while medications
did financial wonders for doctors and helped
close mental institutions, they numbed
symptoms without addressing deeper issues,
and did not cultivate the patient’s own
autonomy nor improve its relationships, with
high costs for families and local
communities. Thus, he concluded that “no
doctor can write a prescription for friendship
and love”, and this realization motivated him
to advocate for the pairing of natural
sciences with humanistic approaches (Van
der Kolk, 2014, p.83). Therefore, Van der
Kolk writes that his team at the Trauma
Center spent much time understanding each
patient deeply before considering potential
multifaceted treatments, the one-pill-fits-all
model not being in their organizational
culture. Moreover, he postulated
hermeneutically, that what may appear as
‘wrong’ behaviors are often failed attempts
at voicing needs, or at trying to be heard,
and what is often seen as ‘problems’ are
actually awkward ‘solutions’ for those who
do them. Therefore, for Van der Kolk, the
whole human being picture included mind
and relationships, not just the body, and
asking ‘What is happening?’ was a way to
access that bigger picture.
In conclusion, although both Rogers and
Van der Kolk were first educated in natural
sciences, they each realized that the ‘What is
wrong with you?’ worldview was
maladapted for human systems. In each their
own socio-historical contexts, they switched
to ‘What is happening?’, humbly admitting
ignorance, and trusting that accepting, safe
and compassionate environments were what
human beings needed to resolve their own
dialectic tensions. Without giving up in face
of adversity and resistance to change, nor
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succumbing to peer pressures, nor falling for
pharmaceutical fads, they took the
commitment to humanistically complete the
gap left by positivism’s flaws, to trust their
own critical thinking while breaking taboos,
and to use empiricism at the service of
humanity, while not forgetting the role of
ethics in mental health. Today, with the
phoenix of eugenics rising from its ashes
worldwide, on-going atrocious wars, natural
catastrophes, domestic violence, etc., not
only Trauma-Informed trainings are still
relevant, but are needed more than ever.
Rogers and Van der Kolk have shown us the
way with persistence and courage. Let’s
continue to walk in their footsteps, if we are
to be optimistic about the future.
References
American Psychological Association (a),
(2024). Carl Rogers, PhD, 1947 APA
President.
https://www.apa.org/about/governance/pr
esident/carl-r-rogers
American Psychological Association (b),
(2024). Former APA Presidents: 1946:
Henry E. Garett, PhD.

https://www.apa.org/about/governance/pr
esident/former-presidents
Elliot, D. M., Bjelac, P., Fallot, R. D.,
Markoff, L. S., & Reed, B. G., (2005).
Trauma-informed or trauma-denied:
Principles and implementation of traumainformed services for women. Journal of
Community Psychology, 33(4), 461–477.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20063
Evans, R. I., (1975). Carl Rogers: the man
and his ideas. E.P Dutton & Co., Inc.
New York.
Lippitt, J., Evans, C.S., Zalta, E.N., &
Nodelman, U., (2024). Søren
Kierkegaard, The Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy. Retrieved on October
29th, 2024.
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall202
4/entries/kierkegaard
Van der Kolk, B., (2014). The body keeps
the score: Brain, mind, and body in the
healing of trauma. Penguin Books.
Van der Kolk, B., (2020). A letter from
Bessel Van der Kolk. Behind the Globe.
Retrieved on October 27th, 2024.
https://web.archive.org/web/2020040818
2345/https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/
about/behind-the-globe

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Appendix A
What follows is a real-life example showing the power of asking ‘What is happening?’. While
working as a support worker in a ‘dry’ homeless shelter (i.e. no drugs or alcohol consumed on site)
in downtown Victoria, British-Columbia, part of my job description was to escort out anyone
found intoxicated, and/or help them find a place in another shelter whenever possible.
In the specific case discussed here, there were suspicions that a male resident may have been
intoxicated, so a social worker asked me to make closer observations then report back. When I saw
the suspected man, he had just tumbled down the stairs. I approached, greeted him, and after
checking in to make sure he was okay, I asked ‘What is happening?’, then listened attentively. He
complained of being dizzy and tired. I did not notice slurred speech, alcohol or drug smell, or any
sign of intoxication. However, I observed that he was wearing crooked bifocal glasses with
shattered lenses. I asked him: ‘How long ago did your glasses break?’ He said that happened a

year before, when he had been beaten up on the first day that he became homeless, and he had
been seeing triple ever since.
After we parted, I wrote a report of my observations to the social worker. In the following days,
with the man’s consent, the social worker booked an eye exam. Finally getting to a clinic meant a
lot to him. When the glasses arrived a few weeks later, I accompanied him for pick up. Immediately
after he put them on, his face lit up, he stood up and danced joyously without falling. On his way
back to the shelter, he walked straight and fast. Soon he began to read again and ride a bicycle. He
applied to become a volunteer, which eventually gave him references, which in turn got him a paid
job and within a few months, a place to call home.
Homelessness is now a thing of the past for this man. Yet, all I did was to ask a few TraumaInformed questions, write a report, accompany him. He chose to go to his exam, chose his frames,
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picked them up, volunteered, read, rode his bike, got a job, kept it long enough to save enough
money, and got his own place. If I had asked ‘What’s wrong with you?’ chances are the interaction
would not have gone so smoothly, and chances are I would not have learned about his needs. In
the worse case, he would have been labeled unruly, flagged in the shelter database, and sent back
on the street or ping-pong endlessly between organizations. Who knows how long it would have
taken him until he got new glasses?

My manager hailed this as a success story, but in my point of view, we were not done. I argued
that small change well-done can have big effects, and suggested to include basic vision issues
questions in the entry intake form, in order to systematically repeat this story countless times. So,
the intake form was indeed changed, and since then, dozens more got eye care, and most of those
are no longer homeless. This proves that long-standing institutions can look at their own structures,
ask ‘What is happening?’, and be curious about how the designs of their own service delivery
systems impacts the outcomes of the people are going through them. This experience thought me
what Rogers and Van der Kolk also had realized: being curious with one another can literally
unlock ‘the process of becoming’. I believe that Trauma-Informed Approach in service-delivery
across the range of all human affairs could be part of the solutions for many of society’s woes,
homelessness being one of them.

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