ABSTRACT

The Kleinian overarching theory is a developmental model. One of its particular characteristics is that it sees development as repetitively cyclical throughout life. Psychical trauma therefore is seen as an interference or interruption in this process. Melanie Klein rarely uses the term “psychic trauma” in her theoretical papers. Trauma is described and explored in clinical papers. Jacques Lacan, a careful reader of Freud, started from the point of view that there are two kinds of trauma in psychoanalysis, the trauma of birth and the trauma of the discovery of sexuality. Trauma in early Freud involves two distinct moments: the first scene of the child’s seduction by an adult, which for the child leads to no sexual excitement, and a second moment, after the latency period, where a seemingly trivial situation, which nevertheless shares certain common traits with the first moment, becomes traumatic in reference to the memory of the first scene and leads to repression.