The originary trauma: A comment on Howard Levine’s paper

Journal title PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE
Author/s Gabriele Cassullo
Publishing Year 2021 Issue 2021/4
Language Italian Pages 13 P. 581-593 File size 308 KB
DOI 10.3280/PU2021-004002
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Why psychoanalysts came to conceive what Howard Levine (2021) calls a "problematic either-or extremity" between conflict theories and developmental trauma theories? It is hypothesized that at the roots of the polarity between these two different clinical attitudes there is an "originary trauma", a trauma that can never reach a full and effective figurability: a trauma that cannot be represented. Such a trauma constituted the caesura that on the one hand has produced a progress on the intellectual level (in the history of psychoanalysis, the birth of the psychoanalytic theory of unconscious fantasy), but, on the other hand, at the price of creating the lack of development of an affective capacity, not only of a cognitive capacity, of listening the traumaticity within the patient’s communications.

Keywords: Howard Levine; Trauma; Sándor Ferenczi; Otto Gross; Dead mother

  • L'irrappresentabile ombelico del trauma. Sul dibattito scaturito dall'articolo di Howard B. Levine Francesco Giglio, in PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE 1/2022 pp.131
    DOI: 10.3280/PU2022-001015
  • Psychoanalysis: Historical, clinical, sociocultural, and institutional aspects Marco Conci, Gabriele Cassullo, in International Forum of Psychoanalysis /2024 pp.219
    DOI: 10.1080/0803706X.2024.2454190

Gabriele Cassullo, Interventi sull’articolo di Howard Levine. Il trauma originario: commento all’articolo di Howard Levine in "PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE" 4/2021, pp 581-593, DOI: 10.3280/PU2021-004002