If we compare Freud's theory of trauma with Janet’s from our current perspective, we cannot help having an impression that Freud's idea of trauma was rather optimistic and insufficient. Freud considered trauma a subject of repression like any desires or memories that we do not want to be aware of. But Freud was not taking into account situations where ego function including repression is totally overwhelmed and disabled by traumatic experiences. Freud’s theory of repression was aimed at explaining various types of psychopathology in our daily living, except that it was not ready for explaiing serious trauma.
Stressing the importance of the mechanism of conflict and repression leads us to belittle the significance of trauma and related mechanism of dissociation. If we follow Freud’s “hydrauric model”, the biggest cause for psychopathology of human being was the mounting libidinal pressure. Freud first thought that the main culprit for this pressure was sexual trauma (seduction) in the childhood. But once Freud became aware that same libidinal pressure can be created by something other than trauma, such as children’s sexual fantasy, he did not have to maintain the trauma (seduction) theory.
Repression model plays a big role in attributing meanings or motivation to the patients’ symptoms and behaviors. It was Freud’s work to find meanings in the patients’ dreams. Freud criticized Janet’s theory of dissociation, stating as follows;
According to him [Janet] hysteria is a form of degenerate modification of the nervous system, which shows itself in an innate weakness in the power of psychical synthesis.(Five Lectures, SE 11, 1909, p.21)
Certainly, if we explain the patient’s symptoms as caused by the patients’ decreased synthetic capacity, it is an abandonment of the effort to search meanings of their symotoms that. Freud could not accept.
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