ABSTRACT
During the war academic neurology has come more and more to regard the aetiology of the traumatic neuroses from the psychological point of view. Despite the rapprochement referred to by Ferenczi, however, there are several respects in which it continues to differ from way of thinking. It takes account almost exclusively of the reaction of the ego-drives to the trauma, and it confines itself to the obvious manifestations of the neurosis. This chapter emphasises the importance of the unconscious and of sexuality in addition to the recognised factors. When, before the war, psycho-analysis proclaimed the sexual aetiology of the neuroses, the case of traumatic neuroses was said to disprove this theory. The great number of neuroses which broke out during the war was thought to demonstrate the unimportance of the sexual aetiology. The effect of trauma on the sexuality of many persons is to give rise to a regressive change in the direction of narcissism.
