ABSTRACT
In 1922 a young American psychiatrist in New York, Abram Kardiner, began treating veterans of the First World War. Faced with the traumatic survival threats presented by their battlefield environments, these soldiers had experienced a constriction of their capacities to interpret, use and master the outer world. The destruction of their organizing abilities for adaptation led in turn to the breakdown in their systems of action, smashing the apparatus responsible for concerted, coordinated and purposeful activity.
