[Psychological trauma: intrusion and unveiling]. / Le traumatisme psychique: effraction et dévoilement.

ABSTRACT

Effects of psychical trauma are frequently described in our contemporary culture, in contexts as diverse as war, assault and disasters of many kinds. These various types of events themselves are not new, but what is more emphasised today is their impact on the overall group. Although traumatic events may affect sizeable populations or sub-populations, Psychical trauma involves a subjective specificity that cannot be reduced simply to a generalised disorder of the emotions and of stress. It relates back to the most profound aspects of being, of the subject in his relationship to language. Trauma produces the conditions of a veritable forcing of the psychical apparatus and an unveiling of a real of the subject which is subsequently expressed through symptoms of repetition, as seen in PTSD.