Childhood and Trauma
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HILDHOOD AND TRAUMA Pedro J. Boschan
In this paper, I follow the evolution of the concept of trauma within psychoanalytic theory, and some of the effects of this evolution. Starting out from the point where Freud gives up the theory of trauma as the cause of neurosis in 1897, and the alleged reasons for such a change, I analyze the theoretical and clinical consequences of this change within psychoanalysis. I proceed to develop Ferenczi’s ideas on trauma, their relevance to present-day psychoanalytic theorizing and practice, as well as for the understanding of the psychic processes in children, tracing the development of some of these ideas in contemporary psychoanalytic thinking.
KEY WORDS: trauma; Ferenczi; psychoanalytic theory; children. DOI:10.1057/palgrave.ajp.3350044
In the last decades, the issue of trauma has aroused a new interest within psychoanalysis. In 1995, I had the privilege of participating in a panel at the International Psychoanalytical Association Congress in San Francisco, on the “Freud–Ferenczi controversy and the problem of psychic reality.” I proposed there that one of the essential points of the controversy was the dialectic interplay between external reality and psychic reality in the genesis of trauma and the way the unconscious is structured. I believe that there is an intimate correlation between our way of conceptualizing trauma, and how we think of the analytic task, especially transference, countertransference and the analytic role. The position we are following is that the theory on trauma is also the theory on how we understand the role of the Other in the construct of subjectivity. Specifically in the analysis of children and adolescents, it gives rise to fundamental questions on how each of us thinks the interpersonal links as related to the genesis of pathology.
Pedro J. Boschan, M.D., is Director of the Department of Psychoanalysis of the University Institute of Mental Health of the Asociación Psicoanalítica de Buenos Aires; Training and Supervising Analyst and Professor of Mental Health of the Medical School of the University of Buenos Aires. Address correspondence to Pedro J. Boschan, M.D., Araoz 2831 9° C, Buenos Aires 1425, Argentina; e-mail: [email protected]
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I shall explain at first how I understand the evolution of the status of trauma in psychoanalytic thinking, and the consequences this evolution had on psychoanalytic theory and technique; secondly, I go on to consider Ferenczi’s ideas on trauma, especially childhood trauma, and then consider some ideas that evolve from those concepts in the light of contemporary psychoanalytic thought. Freud proposes his initial theory on hysteria as a traumatic theory. On September 21, 1897, he confessed to his friend Fliess that he had given up that theory: “I no longer believe in my neurotics.” It is interesting for our later discussion to remember the reasons he lists for this disbelief: The continual disappointment in my efforts to bringing a single analysis to a real conclusion, the running-awa
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