Trauma is universal and is present in each and every one of us. Thus, there is no subject without trauma. The first trauma that we all must learn to live with is that of coming into the world.
The human being comes into a world bathed in language, but in this transit there is a loss, which is the loss of instinct. And the fact is that the speaking being, unlike animals, has a drive, but not an instinct that guides him in the encounter with the sexual, for example. An animal, on the other hand, knows well how and when to approach a possible sexual partner in order to reproduce.
In this sense, for Freud, trauma had to do with the way in which each subject assumes sexuation. Sexuation would be traumatic, because the human body is not prepared for it. What is traumatic in this case is not the sexuality itself, but the lack of knowledge about sexuality. Precisely what produces the trauma is that there is something there that cannot be symbolized.
There are also other types of traumas, such as those that have to do with external events and are related to self-preservation drives, for example, wars and accidents, among others.
How trauma manifests itself: the interpretation of the subject
One of the main characteristics of trauma is that it leaves after-effects, but these are not automatic, but derive from the particular reading that each subject makes of the event in question.
Thus, what may be traumatic for one person may not necessarily be so for another. Thus, it is not a question of the magnitude of the event itself, but of how the subject interprets this event that has been presented to him in life.
For psychoanalysis, there is no direct psychic causality between the traumatic event and the subject’s response, since between the event and the response, there is the position that the subject takes before the circumstances. So, although the necessary condition for there to be a trauma is that something was not symbolized, it is not enough, since a response from the subject is needed to make it traumatic.
This is very important, since the response of each one is tributary of his unconscious. That is to say, it has to do with a knowledge not known by the subject, and the response will depend largely on this.
The role of repression in trauma
In trauma there is always repression. Repression is a defensive mechanism that separates affect from representation. The representations are words or phrases, they are signifiers that remain isolated, repressed and separated from their corresponding affects. The affect remains free and then appears in various symptomatic forms. In this sense, the symptom tries to defend the subject from what he could not elaborate, think or symbolize.
But what cannot be symbolized, thought or elaborated, then appears in various forms through repetition. This is precisely what usually happens when trauma occurs, which is always accompanied by a symptomatic repetition of that for which there was no knowledge.
The two phases of the onset of trauma
Another peculiarity pointed out by Freud is that when trauma occurs, it does not necessarily have to be direct, but often appears some time later.
Freud found that it could occur in two stages. In the first stage, the event is lived without meaning, and in the second stage it is interpreted. This can be seen well in cases of child abuse, where in a first stage the child is not able to symbolize or make sense of what is happening, and later in puberty, when he/she can interpret it in a sexual way, is when the event becomes traumatic.
Treatment to eliminate the repetition of the trauma
In order that the repetition can be relieved, it is very important to carry out a treatment in order to be able to locate the subjective dimension involved, that is to say, that which for this person could not be symbolized producing a void in the subjectivity.
In order to do this, it will be necessary to go through his personal history to help him to locate the traumatic situation. It is also important to emphasize that in an analysis, it is not necessary to give meaning to the traumatic situation, nor to force repression, but rather to provide the subject with a time to understand, a time for him to be able to put some words to what at that moment made a hole for him.