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The current renaissance in interest in psychic trauma echoes controversies from the earliest years of psychoanalysis. Contemporary ideas about trauma had their origins in the study of hysteria, dissociation, and repression. Reflecting that fact, the DSM-III (APA, 1980) still divided hysteria into ‘dissociative type’ and ‘conversion type.’ Beginning with the DSM-III-R (APA, 1987), however, this pair of ‘types’ was split asunder into separate ‘disorders’ (conversion disorder and dissociative disorder) and presently is no longer linked under the rubric of ‘hysteria.’ Some would view such current terms as ‘PTSD/borderline’ and ‘dissociative identity disorder’ as derived from persisting questions about the nature of hysteria, trauma, fantasy, and reality. The so-called ‘mysterious leap from the mind to the body’ in conversion (Deutsch, 1959) has an analogue in dissociation with what I would call the ‘mysterious leap from the mind to the psyche.’
From a primarily clinical viewpoint, a number of these issues are embedded in Brenner's book. It is a clinically detailed, rich, intriguing, and noteworthy