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This paper is an attempt to elucidate neurosis by delineating the nature of trauma and its role in the development of the mind.
Primary traumata, which are physiological conditions that result from failure of homeostasis in a situation of stress, are normal occurrences in development. They are responsible for the development not only of neurosis and psychosis but also of such functions specific for the human being as anticipation, which by mastery of reality serves to avert trauma and is the basis of fantasy and thought. The prototypes of the primary trauma are the shock reactions of the postnatal phase, when the infantile organism is not biologically prepared to meet the demands of the world. This homeostatic deficiency is met by primary defenses, including aggression, identification, hallucination, projection, introjection, and primary repression. More severe frustrations are answered successively by agitation and catatonoid reaction, the latter characterized by general slowing down of vital functions and stupor. Primary defenses are by nature pathogenic, threatening loss of love or loss of contact with reality.
The Oedipal trauma of a somewhat later period is another consequence of the vulnerability of the infantile organism. Sexual overstimulation during sleep or half sleep seems, during the first two years of life, to reproduce the economy of the postnatal trauma: the infantile organism is overwhelmed by sexual excitations which cannot find discharge in an adequate reaction, that is, in full orgasm. Clinical findings suggest that this condition leads to the primary attacks of pavor nocturnus, which are catatonoid reactions under the conditions of sleep. These primary attacks seem to be the core of what is usually understood as the primal scene. They represent the infantile sexual trauma. Succeeding attacks of pavor nocturnus are more or less attenuated repetitions of the original attack resulting from failure to master by dream the infantile trauma. T