ABSTRACT
Every phase of theory-making in psychoanalysis has influenced the current concept of trauma and its clinical evaluation. The concept of cumulative trauma takes into consideration psycho-physical events that happen at the pre-verbal stage of relationship between mother and infant. It correlates their effects on what later becomes operative as a disturbed relationship between mother and child or as a bias in ego and psychosexual development. Freud postulated that Protection against stimuli is an almost more important function for the living organism than reception of stimuli. The protective-shield role is the result of conflict-free, autonomous ego-functions in the mother. This chapter focuses on partial breakdown of the mother's role as a protective shield, which becomes visible only in retrospect as a disturbance and can be designated as cumulative trauma. It considers some of the most pathogenic genetic elements in cumulative trauma.
