Editor's Note: In the January 2017 issue, a group of innovators and leaders look back over different realms of therapeutic practice and offer their view of the eureka moments, the mistakes and misdirections, and the inevitable trial-and-error processes that have shaped the evolution of different specialty areas within the field. Here's one reflection.
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Most people think the field of trauma treatment began around 1980, when the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was first included in the DSM as a result of a movement among Vietnam veterans. But one could actually go back well over a hundred years, to the work of Charcot and Pierre Janet at Salpêtrière in Paris. In fact, Janet in particular articulated most of the relevant issues about trauma that are being rediscovered today, such as getting stuck in reliving trauma, dissociating, and having trouble integrating new experiences and going on with one’s life. Janet primarily used hypnosis with hospitalized trauma patients to help them put the experience to rest, but his work was largely eclipsed by that of Sigmund Freud, in part because fully recognizing the devastating impact of trauma tends to be too overwhelming for mental health professionals and politicians alike. For example, Freud and his mentor, Joseph Breuer, wrote some outstanding papers on the nature of trauma in the 1890s, but they later repudiated them because suggesting the occurrence of incest in upstanding middle-class families in Vienna was so disturbing to their colleagues.
[For more of this story, written by Bessel van der Kolk, go to https://www.psychotherapynetwo...-of-trauma-treatment]
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