Trauma in Childhood—Signs and Sequelae as Seen in the Analysis of an Adolescent

PETER'S ANALYSIS LASTED FOR 6 YEARS AND STARTED AT THE AGE OF 13. Early traumatic and disturbing events played a striking part in his pathology and were vividly reexperienced in treatment. This short paper describes some of these reenactments and gives reasons why the experiences from which they derived might properly be called "traumatic."

In spite of Peter's long and, in many ways, successful analysis, he remained a rather depressed young man, dominated by pervasive feelings of inadequacy and resentment from which he tried to escape by sexual activities. During treatment, his compulsive masturbation, accompanied by sadomasochistic fantasies, and his tendency to enactment, increasingly forced me to think of his disturbance in terms of sexual perversion.

During his masturbatory practices, he needed to create, simultaneously or in quick succession, sexual excitement, pain, and anxiety. He masturbated from early childhood, but in adolescence he enhanced his orgastic pleasure by tying a plastic bag over his head. In this way his fantasy that a female partner was