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Psychic trauma denotes uncontrolled helplessness in the face of the instinctual dangers inevitable in life. In the traumatic state, the ego is incapable of binding the flood of stimulation, and of handling the imminent dangerwithin the context of the unconscious. It has been overwhelmed by the dangersituation. Because the capacity for psychic representation is also paralyzed, the mental images, wishes, and illusions can no longer buffer the ego's relation to reality. Reality is then experienced as merciless and stark. In the traumatic state, the focus of psychic processes has been moved beyond the pleasure principle. These processes are no longer regulated by wish-fulfillment, but by compulsive repetition at the level of action.
I am going to approach my topic by examining the functions of the instinctual wish in the unconscious. In this attempt, I intend to link my inquiry with the pleasure principle and normal psychic function. Then I will focus on the problem of psychic representation by examining the container function of the ego from the viewpoint of primary identification. As a matter of fact, psychic trauma can be seen as a failure of this function. Before proceeding in my theoretical discourse, I will present a brief clinical vignette, in order to illuminate traumatic experience from within.*
The patient is a middle-aged woman. When she was 7 years old, her mother died unexpectedly. Although this catastrophic loss had been dealt with extensively in analysis, a decisive breakthrough was still lacking. When the termination of the analysis was already decided, something strange unexpectedly occurred: the roof of my office began to leak. I could not do anything but place a newspaper under the leak. Water was dripping on it, monotonously and endlessly.
The actual damage of the psychoanalytical space signified a catastrophe