In this text, Roussillon discusses what constitutes trauma. He poses the question of what makes an event traumatic and why? He states that the theorization of what is traumatic and why it is traumatic for a certain subject at a particular moment in their lives refers to the theory of psychic functioning. He places the process of “subjectivisation” in the center of psychic functioning. Therefore he explains trauma in terms of an impossibility of subjectivisation. Each time the subject encounters an experience, which is difficult to transform into representations, which is difficult to “symbolize” there will also be a difficulty of “subjectivisation”, thus it will become a traumatic experience. What is traumatic is what stops the process of symbolization and therefore the process of subjectivisation. Traumatic experiences range from extreme intolerable affects of terror, which makes psychic life in danger to situations of extreme pain, and helplessness.