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The term post-traumatic stress disorder was created in 1980 for DSM-III. It became popular because it validated the chronic anguish of Vietnam veterans and victims of rape, abuse, and natural disasters. The role of psychological trauma in the etiology of mental disorders was proposed by Breuer and Freud and explicated by succeeding psychoanalysts who studied battlefield casualties in World Wars I and II. Current theories of trauma use information-processing models of the mind to understand how people perceive, process, and integrate overwhelming external stimuli. Normal individuals will respond to trauma with compulsive repetition alternating with denial of or withdrawal from the memory, and they recover spontaneously. Ego psychology and self psychology have added to our understanding of the internal world of trauma victims who develop complicated, pathological stress responses. These require long-term treatment that focuses on repair of damaged ego structures. Most recently, investigators are studying the contribution of biological and social factors to this disorder. The author presents treatment strategies based on various theoretical models. She advocates a biopsychosocial approach.