Trauma (n.) is in part, a result of the rational nature of our world. Because we are so accustomed to it, anything shocking makes us doubt our sanity. The primitive man in a similar situation would simply think of fetishes, spirits or Gods.
Trauma (n.) has little power in itself: the woman who walked calmly through a massacre in St Petersburg went hysterical before a trotting cab.
Trauma (n.) is no more than an occasion — the pretext on which a hidden erotic conflict finally shows itself.
Trauma (n.) like shell-shock replays itself in dreams until the stimulus exhausts itself; until then, conscious 'realization' is useless.
Trauma (n.) is, in most ordinary neuroses, not the cause but a secondary phenomenon — the outcome of an attitude already neurotic, when it is not a product of medical fantasy or the patient's compliancy.
Trauma (n.) hunted for as long as possible is a beautiful red herring: it diverts attention from one's slacknesses, callousnesses, greedinesses and spitefulnesses, and requires no change for the better.
A Trauma (n.) has little pathogenic force in itself: many people suffer shocks without neurosis, and fantasies can be just as traumatic as real events, so the individual must meet the trauma with a definite inner predisposition for it to work.
Trauma (n.) can be judged by the average normal person: what would strongly impress him counts for neurotics too, and the earlier in childhood an impression is placed, the more suspect its reality and the likelier a regressive fantasy.