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One can say that the very discovery of psychoanalysis and the earliest psychoanalytic theories of psychopathology are intimately linked to the concept of trauma. In fact the abreaction of repressed traumatic experience was the first theory of psychoanalytic treatment. The revelation that “memories” of childhood seduction were in reality fantasies was the revolutionary idea that led to the recognition of infantile sexuality and the development of the theory of the Oedipus complex. But it led to another equally important step for psychoanalysis; that is, if patients could trace their symptoms back to traumas that were fictitious and which they had themselves created in fantasy, then the logical conclusion was that psychical reality was as important as, or even took precedence over external reality.
These two aspects of reality, psychic as distinguished from factual, were of great significance to Freud. In 1937 (p. 224) he expressed his explicit view that the causes of mental illness were either constitutional or traumatic. Freud maintained both models of psychic trauma throughout his life. In the history of psychoanalysis the entire economic view of metapsychology represents an effort to reconcile these two points of view.
Today, I would allow myself the remark that the only distinguishable reality in psychoanalysis is psychic reality, and the concept of psychic reality is central to all psychoanalysis in both its clinical and its theoretical dimensions.
We have come a long way since Freud's view in 1920 when he spoke of the “stimulus barrier” or “protective shield” which excitations from the outside world could break through, causing traumatic shock. The concept of a protective shield or stimulus barrier became outdated