This paper offers theoretical possibilities for synthesizing psychoanalytic and neurobiological approaches to trauma. It  integrates the findings of biological researchers and the observations of psychoanalysts, as they apply to two functions that are damaged by psychic trauma: the capacity for representation and the capacity for selfregulation. These capacities are interdependent and interactive. The combined result of this disruption can profoundly alter subjective experience. Dr. Saporta proposes that helping patients to symbolize traumatic experience and affect and to self-regulate leads to an improved capacity to symbolize, to experience meaning, and to relate. This can lead to a subjective sense of increased strength. Dr. Saporta's paper was published in Neuro-Psychoanalysis, 2003, 5(1). An earlier version received the Deutsch Prize at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (BPSI).