Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma

Levine argues that traumatized individuals are compelled to reenact their original traumatic experiences in attempts to resolve them—a powerful biological drive that manifests as repetitive behaviors, relationships, physical symptoms, or deliberate recreations of dangerous situations. This phenomenon, which Freud termed “repetition compulsion,” serves a survival function: In nature, young animals review narrow escapes and practice defensive strategies after discharging survival energy, enabling them to develop more effective responses to future threats. Levine observed this pattern in cheetah cubs who, after escaping from a lion, playfully practiced different escape maneuvers before their mother returned.

However, when humans fail to discharge the intense survival energy mobilized during threatening events, this adaptive learning mechanism becomes pathological. Levine presents contrasting scenarios of a near-collision while driving. In the healthy response, the person discharges energy through trembling, reviews alternative strategies, shares the experience with family, and integrates it fully. In the traumatic response, incomplete discharge leaves the person in a heightened state where anger, shame, and revenge fantasies dominate, potentially leading to violent acting-out or internalized self-harm—both forms of reenactment.

The author distinguishes between these two responses to undischarged survival energy: “acting out” (external violence toward others) and “acting in” (internalized violence against oneself through physical symptoms or self-destructive behavior).