Early trauma
the body’s fate
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60106/rsbppa.v28i1.946Keywords:
Body, Early trauma, Psychic singularity, Psychoanalytic technique, Unrepresentable experienceAbstract
This paper explores the concept of early trauma and its bodily outcomes, articulating psychoanalytic theory with the metaphor of Schwarzschild singularity. Starting from Freud’s evolving notion of trauma — from its initial conception as an external event to its later understanding as the result of the articulation between psychic reality and unconscious fantasy — the study emphasizes the unrepresentable nature of early, often pre-verbal traumatic experiences. The analogy with physical singularity allows trauma to be conceived as an opaque nucleus within the psyche, inaccessible to conscious recall and narrative, yet active in organizing mental functioning through symptoms, somatizations and repetition. This perspective is further developed through the contributions of Freud, Bion, Green, Maldavsky and Winnicott. From a clinical standpoint, the paper stresses the need for a technique suited to mental limit-states, privileging containment, tolerance of uncertainty and work at the borders of trauma. It concludes that early trauma constitutes a psychic singularity, requiring an expansion of psychoanalytic theory and technique without abandoning its foundations.
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