The Concept of Trauma According to Ferenczi and Its Effects on Subsequent Psychoanalytical Research

Freud abandoned his belief that all the traumas reported by his hysterical patients were true. He came to the conclusion that pathogenic fantasy was more frequent that real trauma. Ferenczi was the first one to return to the idea that most of the neuroses have a real trauma at their root. His pupil and follower, Michael Balint developed this idea and proposed new ways of describing the mechanism of trauma and and some of the therapeutic consequences. Since then much further research has been done about the problems of pathogenic trauma. The ideas of Maria Torok & Nicolas Abraham as well as some of Leonard Shengold's theories are described in this paper.