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In dealing with a subject as many-faceted, and with as varying and often differing viewpoints as psychoanalysis, clarity and depth can often be achieved by dwelling on a single aspect of the subject in its varying phases. This is amply illustrated by this collection of essays. The topic which they share, psychic trauma, is a happy choice since it combines consideration of the impact of external reality, ego adaptation and its methods of defense, the role of the instincts, and the differentiation of actual and imagined experience, among other factors.
The contributors to this work are members of a small group of analysts especially interested in childhood and development, whose studies were supported by the Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund. The editor, Sidney Furst, starts by reviewing the concepts of psychic trauma in the 1890's and the signal revelation that certain adult symptoms could be considered as precipitates of childhood experiences. This discovery was amplified by the realization that it is the evocation of fright, anxiety, shame or pain which renders an incident traumatic, especially if these effects are later revived by similar stimuli, and cannot be abreacted at the time of their occurrence. This has led to the concept of the stimulus barrier, and of the ego alienation of painful conditions, to the demonstration of sexual activity, psychic as well as physical, in infants, and to speculations concerning the nature of anxiety. There follows a summarized account of how analysts have applied these theoretical constructs to therapeutic encounters with adults and children.
Inevitably other contributors, mentioning the bases of their thinking, tend to overlap with this essay and with each other; yet each has a unique offering. Rangell describes the phenomenology, the constitutional factors, the economic considerations, the genetic, topographic, dynamic, structural and adaptive viewpoints. Neubauer presents case histories illustrating different types