ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the historical origins of trauma, touching on phenomenology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. Although originally referring to a physical injury, the word “trauma” later came to indicate the psychic wounding stemming from a sudden, emotional, and unmanageable shock. Person-specific, developmental, event-specific, and post-traumatic variables all play a crucial role in the onset of post-traumatic psychopathology. Just like the phenomenological conceptions of trauma, the various editions of the DSM have also witnessed radical changes across the years. Finally, several cognitive neuroscientific theories have been put forward to explain post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology, analyzing its neurobiological and neurophysiological bases. Traumatic psychopathology can ultimately offer a clinical model of PTSD that contributes to a deep understanding of the consciousness of time.
