The development of trauma theory in psychoanalysis

The development of trauma theory in psychoanalysis. - The study traces the development from Freud's early hypotheses on trauma and seduction theory to Ferenczi's innovative approach, moving from there to review the relevant findings of research on infancy and recent ideas gleaned in connection with insights on seduction in childhood and not least in the treatment of holocaust survivors and their descendants. The treatment of holocaust survivors made it necessary to reconceptualize trauma theory to encompass this extreme traumatic experience. The author demonstrates how in psychoanalytic thinking different theories of trauma have developed on the basis of two different models, one psyche-economic, the other centered on the theory of object relations. Both models are essential to any appropriate understanding of trauma.