ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an account of experience of John, a senior trauma nurse with a special interest in resilience. Trauma nurses must be able to act quickly to save a life hanging in the balance. They must remain calm under extreme pressure, be strong in the face of catastrophic injuries, manage multiple priorities and tasks, and quickly provide and follow instructions in chaotic situations. For Freud, trauma is something that cannot be processed by the conscious mind and, because of this, it continues to have an unconscious influence on the individual. French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan combined Freud’s ideas with the structuralist principles of Claude Levi-Strauss and others to develop a highly fertile, if complex, set of theories about the human psyche.
