ABSTRACT
In accordance with the medical, 'lesion'-oriented trauma concept, literature on psychic trauma and its consequences tends to concentrate on posttraumatic clinical symptomatology, regardless of the type of trauma exposure. Only a minority of studies either draws on stressor-specific psychological symptoms or calls for a taxonomy of traumatic experiences. With regard to the specificity of genocidal traumatization and persecution of ethnic groups, there is much clinical, but relatively little epidemiological evidence. Recent studies tend to investigate the neurobiological more than the social conditions of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and therapeutic efforts are prone to concentrate on coping with trauma rather than addressing and understanding it. As an outcome of this short review of the very different notions and implications of the trauma concept in different discourses and paradigms, it can be stated that the specific nature of the traumatic situation seems to play a marginal role in clinical as well as in sociological discourse.
