Oppenheim-Gluckman, Hélène

Complexity and difficulties of dealing with traumas in psychoanalysis - 2018.


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This article describes the complexity involved in determining an approach to trauma in psychoanalytic practice. Trauma emerges in different modes during the course of psychoanalytic treatment and the work undertaken in that setting. There may be not just one but several traumas of different natures for a given patient. The issue of the links between trauma and destructiveness, acting out in the course of the treatment, and attacks on the framework and the virtual space of the session, are all part of the clinical picture in this context. Both analyst and analysand can be unwittingly caught up in the social discourse on trauma at large in society, infiltrated by “ready-made icons,” resulting in a risk of alienation, being imprisoned in the trauma, and reconstruction of the family history infiltrated by these icons.