Historical Review

In psychology, the concept of ‘trauma’ has already been recognized for more than 100 years. In the middle of the 19th century, neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot turned to psychologically traumatised patients and treated them with hypnosis, amongst these patients were rape victims.1In hypnotic trance, access can be obtained to certain memories that remain inaccessible under normal circumstances. With the help of hypnotic suggestion, various memory skills can be integrated. Charcot used hypnosis to overcome a traumatic event. His aim was to break through its effect in the present and thereby to cure the patient (see Roth 1998, p. 158 and 166). Moreover, Charcot saw the memory of the traumatic event and not the traumatic experience itself as being the main pathogenic factor.2See Roth 1998, p. 156.

The concept of ‘trauma’ is still widely associated with the Viennese neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Freud’s trauma theory begins with the hypothesis that traumatic events are based on an internal conflict between sexual desires and the social moral code. In 1895, Freud developed a trauma theory in the ‘Studies on hysteria’ wherein he explained the concept of passion.3See Horie 1997, p. 22 f.

After the war in Vietnam, when medicine and psychology were increasingly confronted with pathogenic problems of soldiers suffering from psychosomatic complaints caused by trauma, the term ‘hysteria’,4Hysteria is understood to mean a purposeful psychogenic affliction that is characterised by symptoms of a physical and/or spiritual nature. Emotionally severely overburdening events are seen as the cause. Apart from psychical symptoms like delusions, emotional outbursts, twilight states or amnesia, physical symptoms of illness are also part of hysteria. These include sensory disturbances in the shape of blindness or deafness, numbness, paralyses, tics, etc. (see Arnold, et al 1997, p. 947). Sigmund Freud presupposed a relationship between the symptoms of hysterical patients and the uterus (Greek ‘hysteria’). Therefrom he derived the notion of hysterics (see Horie 1997, p. 22). that had often been used in diagnoses, was abandoned. From then on, the effects of a traumatic incident were considered as being a post-traumatic stress disorder.5Horie 1997, p. 23. The term ‘trauma’ had formerly been used as a link between the diagnostic concept ‘hysteria’ and the phenomenon ‘reminiscence’. In more recent times, the concept ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ indicates: the effect of, and often only later recurring, reactions to an overwhelming experience, for example hallucinations, thoughts, or dreams. Cathy Caruth views being traumatised as meaning ‘being obsessed by an image or event’.6Caruth 2000, p. 85.

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