ABSTRACT
According to Freud's initial theory, neurosis arises when traumas stored in the unconscious break through into consciousness. This first trauma theory posited an injury initially inflicted from outside that becomes troublesome later in life when it is given a secondary meaning (deferred action). It was only later that Freud made room for the thought of an essentially endogenous trauma, in which psychically unintegrated drive impulses produce an overstimulation. In China as in Europe, the conditions under which trauma occurs and the effects it produces must be investigated on an individual basis, honouring the individual biography as a structured history of meaning. Psychoanalytic understanding of psychic trauma, by contrast, is based on the medical model. In medicine, trauma is understood simply as an injury or wound resulting from the application of force from outside. This concept contains two elements: the intrusion from outside, and the internal consequences.
