ABSTRACT
Trauma is a kind of wound. In physical medicine it denotes damage to tissue. In the Trauma Unit's Workshop, we have come to think of the ensuing processes as the transformation of the traumatic event, whatever it might have been, into a shape that is recognisable as an existing form of internal object relationship. It is clear that the history of psychoanalysis and the development of Freud's understanding of trauma are linked. Freud's original paradigm for a traumatic event was sexual seduction, and his original understanding of anxiety was that it consisted of undischarged libidinal excitation. Traumatic situations were seen primarily in terms of unconscious phantasy and the internal world, and this remained his central preoccupation. The processes of mourning, and its pathological counterpart, melancholia, have particular significance for the final outcome of trauma for the individual. The literature is full of accounts of the painful counter-transference experiences that may have to be lived through by therapists treating traumatised patients.
