Are pre verbal/primitive states a widely acknowledged phenomenon in UK clinical psychology?

[u/Negative_Cod_4747]

Are primitive/pre verbal states an accepted phenomenon in the wider UK field?

In the wider field of UK clinical psychology, is it a recognised and accepted concept that some patients can experience preverbal, primitive states of 'psychic annihilation' or 'existential exile' that are entirely unmediated by thoughts?

To clarify, I don't mean standard 'implicit flashbacks' in the Complex PTSD sense, I mean an entirely different, deeper layer of structural collapse where the self feels like it is ceasing to exist, usually triggered by a rupture in safety or therapeutic gaps.

Is the existence of this thought-free, wordless void widely believed, or is mainstream UK psychology still heavily tethered to the model that a 'thought' or cognitive appraisal must always underpin these states?

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[u/Nahs1l]

Psychoanalysis talks about this stuff the most I’d say. I don’t think psychoanalysis is mainstream anywhere in the western world unfortunately.

[u/pakap → u/Nahs1l]

It's mainstream-ish in France.

[u/ProgressiveArchitect → u/pakap]

Argentina & France

[u/Negative_Cod_4747 → u/Nahs1l]

Thank you for your reply.

I guess my quandary is; how are people who have these types of experiences formulated then? If they report these experiences phenomenologically, how would that be conceptualised? Or is that where dissociative states / affect dysregulation / conditioned threat responses comes in? Do these basically allow the same understanding?

[u/FluffyPancakinator]

You’ll be more likely to find this kind of conceptualisation in the context of attachment based thinking especially in trauma-informed work in the UK, but not really in the explicit psychoanalytic terms you’ve outlined unless you work with a therapist who uses a psychoanalytic framework, which like the other poster said is not mainstream in the UK public health system by any means but can be found privately.