The Nature of Trauma and Dissociation

Psychoanalytic approaches to the treatment of trauma

This lecture offers a brief psychoanalytic history of how trauma has been conceptualized from Freud to current thinking and the extent to which treatment is affected by the theoretical model of the clinician. In working with trauma and with severe dissociative disorders, the fine balancing of the internal and external worlds is best led by the patient. How does the clinician avoid secondary traumatization whilst avoiding protectionist pseudo-professionalizm to protect them from the power of the patient’s traumatic narrative?