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At the end of May 2001, the Trauma Study Group of the European Psychoanalytic Federation arranged a meeting in Belgrade. This initiative was received with unexpected enthusiasm, the lectures being overcrowded.
One outcome of this event is this book. The editors present 11 papers, all of which have different approaches to the trauma concept, although in the broader context of psychoanalytical practice and theory. Trauma is one of the most important themes in psychoanalysis, and in its broadest sense, it is part of every analysis and every intervention. Trauma could in a way be seen as the unexpected quantum of energy inserted into a system, a part of chaos or death. Laplanche (1970) elaborates this eloquently in his book Life and Death in Psychoanalysis.
This is not what the various authors write about here. Most of the writers in this book describe trauma in the context of the common use of the word psychic trauma, as a consequence of political and social violence. However, what is interesting is how they approach this in so many different ways. The book struggles with the difficulties of plurality of thought, but also with its advantages. Some of the papers resemble political or sociological articles using Freud's ideas to understand some of the mechanisms of war. Other papers are case studies, presenting traumatized patients, and the theoretical support used for clinical work. Some of the papers present various theoretical perspectives to help us find a context for our patients, but also for psychoanalysis itself, in the melting pot of a modern scientific approach to post-traumatic disorders of various kinds.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to review all the various author's contributions, and, as mentioned, their different approaches makes it even harder to grasp the overall picture the book wishes to present. However, some main features in the papers can be discerned.
This perspective is most clearly seen in Aleksa