Exploring the Causes of and Cures for Psychic Wounds: Freud’s Evolving Theory of Trauma Revisited

This essay aims to weave together Freud’s seemingly disparate discussions of the causes of and cures for trauma and attempts to unravel the significance of his contribution to the literature on trauma. Investigating the aetiology of hysteria, Freud discovers trauma, characterizing it as a psychic wound that persistently impacts the structure of the mind and explains the cure as the recovery of forgotten memory—along with the abreaction of the affect attached to it. Freud’s theoretical shift from “dissociation” to “repression” makes him underscore the idea of “working-through” as a pivotal part of psychoanalytic therapy, one that enables the subject to come to terms with repressed memory. War neuroses brought the concept of the repetition compulsion to his notice, leading him to develop the theory of the death drive, and he defines trauma as the ego’s defense against both endo- and exo-psychic dangers. He interprets the traumatic dream as a repeated attempt to master the traumatic situation with anxiety—a signal that prepares the subject for danger—the absence of which triggers traumatic neurosis. Later, this idea evolves into his suggestion that strengthening the patient’s ego empowers him to master the trauma that had previously overpowered him. Observing, however, that the ego defends itself against the process of recovery, just as it does against the threat of dangers, Freud uncovers the death drive underneath this resistance to recovery and envisages the asymptotic and incomplete process of the cure. Freud’s engagement with the issue of trauma presents several important points. The idea of strengthening the ego for therapeutic purposes echoes his early view of unpleasure as resulting from the ego’s lack of inhibition in the Project of Scientific Psychology, thus providing a thread of consistency in the seemingly discontinuous trajectory of his trauma theory. His emphasis on working-through highlights the importance of the subject’s active role in recovery, which may be disregarded in neuroscientific trauma studies. In historiography, the concept of working-through connotes the therapeutic process of persistently witnessing the truth of wounded individuals without closure. Freud’s account of the cooperation of the analyst and the patient may serve as a model for the “social space” in which a sympathetic listener bears witness to the testimony of the traumatized subject. Finally, the death drive that Freud excavates beneath the ego’s resistance to recovery evokes the concept of death as the ultimate danger to the ego, the mortality that the subject encounters in the course of his traumatic experience. Freud’s reflections on traumatic neurosis testify to his unflinching commitment to discerning the mechanisms and cures of trauma in the process of probing the psychic wounds of his patients.