Trauma, complesso, dissociazione

Abstract

- After a brief review of the main psychoanalytic approaches to psychic trauma, the Authors propose some remarks on the relationship that, according to analytical psychology, exists between trauma, the origin of the emotionally charged complexes and the genesis of the different forms of psychic disturbance. They underline how psychic dissociation is a process that in some measure constantly coexists in the mind with the tendency to integra tion, and how dissociation, in its manifold forms of expression, is one of the main way the mind uses to defend itself from the consequences of a traumatic experience. In the end, some clinical observations illustrate the characteristics that the therapeutic relation can assume with traumatized patients.