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Lenore Terr subheads this work “How Unexpected, Unknowable, and Uncontrollable Happenings Affect Children and Ultimately Us All” and reminds us that after 1897 Freud showed occasional and passing concern for outside events as they affected the later life of patients. Freud did, however, provide definitions for trauma in 1920 when he referred to “a breach in the barrier against stimulus,” and in 1927 when referring to “the sense of utter helplessness,”
and again in 1925, when he wrote of a beginning sense of time in “A Mystic Writing Pad.” Terr suggests that as a result of trauma there is an ascendancy of visual representation above all other perceptual memories, with the exception of infants, where touch is important.
The author makes an original contribution to the elaboration of Freud's concept of a breach in the protective shield against stimuli and the beginning of a time sense in discussing her ideas about the nature of the stimulus barrier. Each function of time (rhythm, duration, sequence, and temporal perspectives) protects children against psychic trauma but each also serves as a signpost for the scarring that is left after a terrible blow or series of blows that impinge on the psyche (p. 155).
Terr's work began with her studies and research following her observations on the children of Chauchilla, who were kidnapped on a school bus in California. She went on to study many adults and children from infancy to latency and adolescence. Terr notes that “Most psychological observations during World War II dealt with the wartime mother-child dyad but not with the child's subjective experience of terror. There were no direct studies of children exposed to these traumatic and frightening events” (p. 11). This had both personal and professional interest since I read this during the Gulf War. The sirens on television recreated a visceral experience of my own childhood during the London Blitz.
The problem of memory is difficult and this makes one question whether there