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The opening events of the French Revolution have stood as some of the most familiar in modern European history. Traumatic Politics emerges as a fresh voice from the existing historiography of this widely studied course of events. In applying a psychological lens to the classic problem of why the French Revolution’s first representative assembly was unable to reach a workable accommodation with Louis XVI, Barry Shapiro contends that some of the key political decisions made by the Constituent Assembly were, in large measure, the product of traumatic reactions to the threats to the lives of its members in the summer of 1789. As a result, Assembly policy frequently reflected a preoccupation with what had happened in the past rather than active engagement with present political realities. In arguing that the manner in which the Assembly dealt with the king bears the imprint of the behavior that typically follows exposure to traumatic events, Shapiro focuses on oscillating periods of traumatic repetition and traumatic denial. Highlighting the historical impact of what could be viewed as a relatively “mild” trauma, he suggests that trauma theory has a much wider field of potential applicability than that previously established by historians, who have generally confined themselves to studying the impact of massively traumatic events such as war and genocide. Moreover, in emphasizing the extent to which monarchical loyalties remained intact on the eve of the Revolution, this book also challenges the widely accepted contention that prerevolutionary cultural and discursive innovations had “desacralized” the king well before 1789.

Asylum-seekers are at high risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to frequent exposure to trauma. We investigated the coping intentions and lay beliefs about appropriate coping strategies among asylum-seekers from Sub-Saharan Africa in Germany. The study applied a methodological triangulation strategy with a vignette describing symptoms of PTSD. In a quantitative part, asylum-seekers (n = 119) that were predominantly from Eritrea (n = 41), Somalia (n = 36), and Cameroon (n = 25), and a native comparison sample (n = 120) responded to questionnaires assessing coping, traumatic events, and post-traumatic symptoms. In a qualitative part, asylum-seekers (n = 26) discussed coping strategies in focus groups. In the quantitative part, asylum-seekers displayed higher intentions for religious coping, emotional support, and denial compared to the native participants. Asylum-seekers with a higher symptom load expressed lower intentions to seek instrumental support. Asylum-seekers with a lower educational level and those with a higher symptom load expressed higher intentions for substance use. In the qualitative part, we identified three superordinate themes: (a) religion, (b) social support systems, and (c) cognitive strategies. Asylum-seekers expressed coping intentions that are associated with an adaptive response to trauma. Less-educated asylum-seekers with a higher symptom load might constitute a particularly vulnerable group.

For almost 45 years, the experience of Jewish children who were hidden during World War II was considered to be of little importance, particularly with respect to what had taken place in the concentration camps. Their very history was ignored in the many accounts of the Holocaust. It was only at the end of the 1980s that their experience began to be thought of as potentially traumatic. In this paper, the authors report on their psychoanalytical research project concerning the psychological outcomes of those experiences that had remained concealed for such an extraordinarily long latency period. The results are based on the analysis of 60 accounts and on psychoanalytically-oriented group work. The authors show that the trauma experienced by those hidden children was triggered by the retroactive effect of a deferred action [après-coup].

The paper starts from a question about the subconscious needs and anxieties which may underlie society's current responses to trauma. In particular, the author argues that the interest in the trauma of torture and man-made violence is a reaction to the increasingly dehumanizing and death-denying culture we live in. After proposing that the various categories of societal responses-the author focuses on evaluation, treatment, and advocacy-to traumatized subjects hide defenses of denial, distortion, refusal, with respect to the challenge of mortality, meaning-making, and mourning, the author then makes the thesis that they can derail and corrupt the project of post-traumatic repair. The paper proceeds with an examination of the ethics and politics that are implicit in contemporary North American society's current approach to trauma. The central argument is that the current approach may contain a collective acting out that often ends up being re-traumatizing to the traumatized subjects.

A wide range of demographic, medical, and personality and coping variables have been implicated as predictors of psychosocial outcomes following the onset of spinal cord injuries (SCI). The primary purpose of this study was to examine the role that perceptions of health control (internality, chance-determined, and other persons-determined) and coping strategies play in predicting respondents’ negative affect, namely, reactions of depression and anxiety [i.e., posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)], as outcomes of psychosocial adaptation to disability. A second purpose was to investigate the potential role that time since injury (TSI) plays in moderating the influence of coping on psychosocial outcomes related to SCI. Ninety five survivors of SCI participated in the study by completing a battery of self-report measures. Two sets of multiple regression analyses were employed to address the study’s goals. Findings indicated that after controlling the influence of gender, age, time since injury, and number of prior life traumas: (a) the use of disengagement coping successfully predicted both respondents’ levels of depression and PTSD; (b) none of the perceptions of control of one’s health significantly influenced psychosocial reactions to SCI, as indicated by depression and PTSD, although perceptions of chance control showed a moderate positive trend; and (c) time since injury did not moderate the relationships between coping and negative affect related to the onset of SCI. The implications of these findings to rehabilitation professionals are discussed.

Current conventional assessment methodologies used to diagnose posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rely heavily on symptom counts obtained from clinical interviews or self-report questionnaires. Such measures may underestimate the impact of traumatic events, particularly in individuals who deny or repress emotional distress. This case report illustrates the use of two methods of narrative analysis to assess unconscious representations of PTSD. Linguistic analysis and a computerized analysis of referential activity were able to capture unconscious aspects of the traumatic experience.

The central point in these formulations is that the traumatic experiences of one generation can be transmitted unconsciously to the second, and often third generation, in some fashion, such that these children and grandchildren find themselves living out-in their private or professional lives-certain aspects of the original traumata in a way that they cannot recognize or understand because the origins are hidden. It can indeed become an unpleasant impetus toward establishing an early feeling of separate individual subjectivity and responsibility in the small child.\\n In the small groups, progress was often very slow, since the participants seemed highly inhibited toward asking for or revealing intimate details of their personal lives.