Traumatisme et psychanalyse : comment passer de l’excitation à la mise en représentation ?

Abstract

ObjectivesThis article develops the psychoanalytical theories of trauma in Freud's work and that of other psychoanalysts. The author will show the place of traumatism prior to language acquisition and its specificities. We will propose a method of treatment, group therapy. Freud's theoryUsually traumatism designates a psychological impact of events, which are painful for a person and his life. This term is over-used in common language. Actually in France “trauma” usually results in immediate intervention of psychological treatments. In psychoanalytical theory, the notion of trauma is at the heart of Freud's work. This notion has varied greatly from 1905 to 1931. Many psychoanalysts work on the place of trauma in self-development. But in this article, we will examine the work of only two other authors: Ferenczi and Winnicott. These psychoanalysts work on “narcissic damage”. This problem corresponds to the absence of an adequate response from the object to a stressful situation and constitutes a mutilation of the self. The conception of trauma has many meanings: the first theory is that of the overwhelming of the defense mechanism of the subject and the other is repressed memory in relationship to theories of sexuality. The second theory is that trauma interrupts the self-continuity. In this situation, the subject clings to perceptive sensations. There is an interruption in the cycle of representation. It is not possible to use the representation mechanism. Actually many children who turn to child psychiatrists have pasts filled with traumas. There have not constructed transitional areas, which would permit them to create psychological spaces differentiating the imaginary from the real. For other children, however, the notion of trauma is difficult to recognize in their own lives. Clinical caseHere, the author will present an observation of a child who had a trauma at the age of 8 months. His trauma was very precocious, occurring at a time prior to the child's language acquisitions and he didn’t have the skills to express his emotion. In therapy groups, he is able to remember the sound of the American ambulance siren, and with this sound, he expresses this psychological disorganization with great anxiety. It is probably the only memory he has been able to keep of this extremely traumatic experience. This analysis will show that the only memory of the child is an auditory one. ConclusionThe author concludes with the interest of group's therapies permitting the emotional expression through play rather than through language. When there are group therapies, the children are going to have a certain excitation, and they feed off of each other; this group dynamic helps to transform the excitation into representation. The group therapies enable the children to reconstruct their pasts and repress the trauma. This therapy results in an associative representation: the children live emotional experiences and they translate these emotions into images (figurability). Then they arrive at a representation with a scenario and exceptionally at verbalization.