ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins by exploring how studies of railway and industrial accidents in Britain and Germany in the mid-to-late nineteenth century took the first step in repositioning trauma from a physical wound to a psychological injury. It traces the relationship between trauma and modernity, arguing that the intellectual history of trauma cannot be viewed in isolation from the social, economic, political, and cultural contexts in which it is embedded and with which it interacts. The book examines how early clinical research on nervous disorders gradually shifted from an interest in physiological models of hysteria towards a more psychodynamic approach to trauma, focusing on the seminal work of Jean-Martin Charcot, Pierre Janet, and Sigmund Freud. It shows that the range and heterogeneity of cultural trauma theory by exploring some important issues and tensions that have marked the field.
