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This volume, the first in a projected monograph series sponsored by the Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund, considers the important topic, psychic trauma. The papers are contributed by a distinguished group of psychoanalysts who met in discussion for three days. The result is a comprehensive survey of the topic both as regards its past history and its future development. Many questions are raised and answers are tentative. But a trend appears that indicates a basic agreement on fundamentals with disagreement, for the most part, only on secondary issues.
Dr. Furst introduces the volume with an exhaustive historical survey and bibliography. The value of his chapter is enhanced by his approach, which places the various writings in perspective, giving the reader a critique, not merely a summary. He discusses the concept of the stimulus barrier but adds the later theories of danger situations and sense of helplessness as factors in trauma. To define trauma as a breach in the stimulus barrier is a tautology. The development of ego psychology and the structural hypothesis have made it clear that economic consideration of a psychic activity is only one part of an explanation. In his later writings, Freud went beyond his 1916 statement that 'Indeed, the term "traumatic" has no other sense than an economic one'.
The scope of the book may be best indicated by listing the chapter headings: The Metapsychology of Psychic Trauma (Rangell); Trauma and Psychopathology (Neubauer); The Influence of Infantile Trauma on Genetic Patterns (Greenacre); Trauma, Strain, and Development (Sandler); Trauma and Infantile Experiences: A Longitudinal Perspective (Solnit and Marianne Kris); Trauma and