ABSTRACT
In the devastated aftermath of World War I, Freud was brought up short by the so-called war neuroses. Soldiers came back from the front traumatized: their minds would be flooded with horrific memories of war, they would wake up night after night terrified by dreams of the same atrocity. Such patients present a dramatically different profile from a person suffering neurotic conflicts.11 In particular, their terrifying dreams cannot reasonably be interpreted as the disguised gratification of a wish. Nor can one understand their tortured daily lives as the outcome of a conflict between the pleasure and reality principles. These people were being overwhelmed by trauma over and over again. There is no way one could understand that as a neurotic turning away from reality.
