ABSTRACT
In many of today's psychoanalytic theorisations, which build upon Ferenczi's contributions about the theoretical and clinical aspects of trauma theory, trauma is considered to be an invasion – of passion, love folly or hatred towards some other – into the subject's ego. Ferenczi developed his theory of trauma starting from his clinical experience with borderline cases, and he presented it in his final works, especially in his famous work on Confusion of tongues between the adults and the child (1932), where he attributed a crucial role to external objects in the structuring of the child's psychic apparatus, and he underscored two essential arguments for psychoanalytic theory: identification processes and the splitting of the ego. To safeguard one's spirit and integrity it is necessary to sacrifice the living portion of the body and submit oneself to a self-treatment, to an autotomy in which the person has to abstract oneself both from oneself and from others.
