ABSTRACT
It may seem anomalous that current contributions on post-traumatic neurosis in adults by a number of authors, including Caroline Garland (1998), draw heavily on Kleinian theory, yet you will see almost no use of the term “psychic trauma” in the theoretical papers of Kleinian and Post-Kleinian writers. Trauma is described and explored in clinical papers and case discussions, but not usually specified in theoretical papers. Traumatic experience is always imminent, and parental love, care, and understanding are required to keep it at bay or to counteract it. In 1926 Freud produced a theory of repetition in play, in response to early adverse experience: The ego which experienced the trauma passively, repeats it actively in a weakened version, in the hope of being able itself to direct its course. It was the fear of a recurrence of the traumatic state that was used thereafter as an internal threat, compelling her to perform compulsively various activities.
