Even though these “responses of catastrophe” coalesce in PTSD and for some time circumscribe a person’s choices, no one wants catastrophe to define the meaning of her or his life. People want to be effective in achieving goals they set, not their trauma sets—and understanding more about the biological mechanisms of trauma should provide a way for them to meet those goals, especially college literacy goals of interest to compositionists.

By looking at the physiological correlations among trauma, learning, and writing, I am not proposing that the learning problems associated with trauma are medical problems, resolved with medical solutions. Nor am I proposing that these learning problems related to trauma result from strictly psychological problems that can be “healed” in the same sense that broken bones or torn skin can heal after a traumatic accident. Such notions of healing suggest a mending that, if perfectly executed, leaves no or few visible scars. Such notions of healing suggest also a reversal of a potentially destructive process, a “return” to a former equilibrium or wholeness. From an enactionist perspective, such notions are wrong, or at best inadequate. Although trauma is a problem of the mind, enactionists argue that mind and body are inseparable and, try as the mind might with psychic compartmentalization, not segregable from the physical body it inhabits. Enactionists might argue then that all memory, some of which is accessible explicitly with words but most of which is not and is implicit or subconscious and appears automatic or intuitive, is created through biased learning stored contingently in the body. Thus, achieving equilibrium or wholeness must not be conceived of as a return to a former state, but rather must be understood as a new state, though perhaps similar to or reminiscent of a former state. Furthermore, as an activist educator, the equilibrium or wholeness and health which I seek for all learners is better described as an evolving competency: the ability to effect one’s own evolving goals, in concert with whatever physical or psychological challenges present.