In the writing of 'The Self and Complex Trauma', a serious psychological disorder related to traumatic experience, Dr Vito Zepinic relates how he had in mind to give a significant contribution to the wide and complex issues that appeared as outcomes to the horrible experience and their disastrous impact upon the trauma victim's self. Relevant findings in psychology and psychiatry have identified and studied the psychological stressors which reside on a complex, multi-dimensional continuum in the patients' experiences. It follows that there is a need for a new diagnostic category or type of disorder known as a 'Complex Trauma' which displays long-time symptoms (syndrome) of prolonged and/or repeated traumatic experience.
Complex trauma develops when the individual is subject to repeated/ prolonged, or series of traumas and is incapable of escaping it for an extended period of time. Trauma itself has been defined as the shock reactions to traumatic event(s) that trauma victim is helpless to prevent. It develops into a trauma syndrome that is still to be fully studied and understand by the experts. Thus, Dr Zepinic, who has excellent research and clinical experience of treating the survivors of this disorder, and his work, is on the leading edge of scholarship attempting to describe the sickness and create treatment programme for it.