ABSTRACT
The diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is becoming increasingly common today, suggesting that the clinic has returned to its original starting point (Freud and Breuer 1978 [1895d]). The argument of this chapter will be that both can be understood as situated between the actual-pathology and the psychopathology positions, albeit with a very clear stress on actualpathology. Undergoing traumatic events can cause a number of other psychopathological disorders than PTSD, particularly depression, addiction, and personality disturbances. Comorbidity is less the exception than the rule, and in a large number of cases the other disturbances will appear in isolation, that is to say, without an obvious PTSD present. Like anorexia, automutilation has been recuperated by normal hysteria in the shape of piercing and its related forms. Actualpathological automutilation—usually going back to a traumatic history—eliminates the Other; the patient acts on his or her own.
