Niederschlag

17:21 May 31, 2013 

Of behavioural patterns?

17:20 May 31, 2013 

I read this as saying that past relationship experiences get crystallized/hard-wired into schemata that repeat themselves. Difficulty then in breaking out of vicious cycle cos that's the way you view the world then. I'm a mere laywoman in this field, but when people suffer trauma at some point in their lives part of them gets stuck at the age at which the trauma happened. These are these crystallizations. I'm sure there'll be a technical term so will now bow out because I don't know it.

12:13 May 31, 2013 

"To fall out" is a general concept ("the boy fell out of the tree"); it's not the same as "fallout," whether literally or figuratively. The boy's falling out of the tree is not "fallout"! For chemistry, you can say sediment, precipitate, or deposit for what you describe.
Meanwhile, I checked my old, usually forgotten, Cassells DE-EN-DE dictionary (what? we can use paper dictionaries?) and found as figurative meanings for Niederschlag: result, outcome, upshot. The first two make sense in my context.

11:51 May 31, 2013 

Though I thought sedimentation to be a different process entirely.

And then consider this: "The solute is said to 'fall out of solution' when the crystals of solute appear in the solution. The first crystals that fall out of solution are too small to be seen, but as more molecules leave the solution, they bind together and form larger and larger crystals."

From: http://www.education.com/science-fair/article/crystals/

Mayxbe it's not the best source, or there is a misunderstanding between us, dunno.

11:46 May 31, 2013 

That would be sedimentation (in chemistry), not fallout, and I can't think of it being used metaphorically. Fallout is radioactive. I find it odd to use it in this context. Usually it would be something like "there was a lot of political fallout from Congressman X's extramarital affair" (I don't know why that particular image came to me...!).

10:03 May 31, 2013 

Fallout was also my first idea. Definition by the free dictionary: side-effects; secondary consequences

08:49 May 31, 2013 

... based on "Niederschlag" more like in the chemical sense, when crystals fall out of a solution. Which is why "fallout" comes quite close; "crystallization" might be another option. I don't know whether these metaphors are as "transferable" in English, as they seem to be in German.

23:05 May 30, 2013 

Hi Susan, I think we need to wait for a contributor sporting a PhD to confirm this option.

22:54 May 30, 2013 

I saw that, but wasn't sure that "find expression" was the meaning here. I guess it could be. Andrew, are you suggesting "fallout" might be an answer, in a metaphorical sense? I wasn't sure whether German uses the word that way, as English does.