The conceptualization of trauma in psychoanalysis: an introduction

ABSTRACT

This paper highlights some aspects of the conceptualization of trauma in psychoanalysis and introduces the three subsequent papers by Bernard Chervet, Jan Abrams and Howard Levine. It focuses on the interchange between external and internal reality, the construction of traumatic defensive organizations and the role of reparation and guilt in overcoming the repetition compulsion.

KEYWORDS:

• Conceptualization of trauma
• external/internal reality
• traumatic defensive organizations
• repetition compulsion
• reparation
• guilt

Notes

1 Letter to Wilhelm Fließ from 21 September 1897.

2 Letter to Wilhelm Fließ from 11 January 1897, “Manuscript M” from May 1897.

3 This does not become evident as a concept in its own right in the Standard Edition, since Strachey used different translations such as “diphasic onset” or “second phase”.

4 See Freud (1896a, 153, 1899, 1909, 1918, 45, 54, 1925, 1937, 1950, 278–282).