Traumatisme et subjectivation

Abstract

Different modalities of subjective responses can be observed from a traumatic encounter; the clinical picture of a post-traumatic stress state is rarely complete, and the examination of structural phenomena is not easy. The subjects we meet have joined the military institution at a time when their identity was still under construction, and continued to be built up in support of an ideal, which is not simply an individual ideal, but a group ideal, sometimes raised to the level of a legend, as can be observed within the Foreign Legion. It is well known that a latency period usually precedes the outbreak of unrest. This article will attempt to situate the subjective and temporal coordinates of certain traumatic decompensations and the related care issues. Our practice led us to observe that it is frequently during an experience of confrontation with the reality of death, when the subject is deprived of his identifications, that this ideal weakens. This unveils in passing some points of the “initial” subjective position of the one who will be henceforth a “psychic wounded”. The risk taken for his life, consubstantial of the military engagement, as an element carrying the narcissism, will lead us to explore the links between the collapse of the ideal and the outbreak of the psychotraumatic disorders. Very often, the treatment which the subject considers to have been subjected to, by his leaders in particular, and the effects of this treatment, lead the practitioner to revisit with the patient the issues of recognition which will not always be restored by the medical-psychological support devices proposed by the institution.