ABSTRACT
According to the WHO, depression will be the second most frequent illness in Western countries in 2020. Depressive illness is even the leading cause of disability in the whole world in terms of the number of people afflicted: around 300 million individuals are suffering from severe depression. This chapter discusses that clinical and extra-clinical researches have shown that the connection between trauma and depression is much more dramatic than the classical psychoanalytical literature had postulated. Understanding trauma and its shorter- and long-term effects is a central topic for clinical psychoanalysis as well as for the neuro-sciences. The traumatic experience carves itself into the body and directly influences the organic base of psychic functions. The psychoanalytic insights on psychodynamics and the genesis of traumatisation are generally based on psychoanalysts' intense work with individual patients that come to them because of their psychic or psychosomatic problems.
