Abstract
Although the official term of posttraumatic stress disorder implies the opposite, trauma is not identical with the noxious event itself. An adequate definition of trauma would require the inclusion of both the objective and subjective components of a traumatic experience. Moreover, trauma is not limited solely to the traumatic situation, but is better defined as a socio-psychological process which can be completed in the course of time, if at all. The superposition of multiple trauma processes throughout a person's life span can make this task even more complex. We propose that what turns an experience to be traumatic is not only the interruption of information processing, but the activation of a maladaptive process, i.e., trauma is a threatening experience which turns an adaptive process to a maladaptive one. The six concepts of traumatic double-bind, traumatic turning point, completion expectancy, traumatic time perception, traumatic obsessions, and traumatic whirlpool are presented to better clarify this maladaptive process. Traumatic experiences and the consequently altered self-perceptions contribute to the impairment of the mutuality between internal world and external reality of the affected person. This is accompanied by a renewed perception of the self in context of a different reality accompanied by an alteration in vigilance, awareness, control, and sense of concentration. De-personalization is the core clinical element of this resulting condition which is called dissociation.