Trauma beyond trauma according to Henry Krystal

Abstract

After the end of the Second World War, psychoanalysis focused mainly on the study of the 'Nazi mind', i.e. the psychological characteristics of war criminals and their collaborators. It was not until the 1960s that some psychoanalysts turned their attention from the aggressors to the victims of Nazi persecution. However, the attempt to understand the traumas experienced and their aftermath revealed the inadequacy of psychoanalytic conceptions of trauma and highlighted the need to rethink them.  One of the psychoanalysts who focused on these phenomena was Henry Krystal. This author rethought the psychoanalytic concept of trauma and proposed the concept of 'catastrophic trauma' to characterise what he considered to be the complete phenomenon of trauma. The aim of this article is to analyse Krystal's concept of trauma and to discuss how it deepens Freud's understanding of the traumatic phenomenon.