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Trauma, Psychoanalysis and History

Author(s) : Luis Sanfelippo

Reviews and Endorsements

We should be grateful to Luis Sanfelippo for his research on trauma, a concept that over the years since Freud used it to start psychoanalysis, experienced transformations, expansions and bastardizations. His meticulous research of Freud's papers should allow clinicians and theoreticians to stand on more solid ground when attempting to understand the human condition. The exploration of trauma in psychoanalysis is scholarly and complemented by the research on the link with other human sciences and culture that significantly enriches our understanding of the other concept.
Alberto Pieczanski, MD, psychoanalyst; training and supervising analyst, Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis; member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, UK; co-editor (with Nydia Pieczanski, MD) of The Pioneers of Psychoanalysis in South America: An Essential Guide

Trauma is one of the words most often associated with the experience of the contemporary world: two world wars, crimes and mass violence have originated a growing awareness of psychic injuries, both individual and collective. The interest of Luis Sanfelippo's research lies in the fact that it restores, around Sigmund Freud, a key moment in the geneology of this notion. Psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have not ceased to deepen and reformulate it, but their thinking is inseparable from a history that concerns us all.
Jacques Revel, École des hautes études en sciences sociales, France

Thanks to the recent exhumation of documents and reconstructions of context, which this book helps to bring to light, the canonical version of the reasons for Freud's abandonment of his trauma theory has lost consensus. Pursuing Freud's delays, returns, mutations and perplexities, Luis Sanfelippo highlights unknown subtleties of that inner debate. Observing that whirlwind would allow one to discover, as he says, how 'the past does not determine a necessary direction; but it conditions, it generates conditions of possibility and, also, it determines impossibilities.
Jorge Baños Orellana, École Lacanienne de Psychanalyse, France

The passion fo psychoanalysis leads Luis to a rigorous study of the concept of trauma in Freud, given the different versions that emerge from various readings at different times. Luis Sanfelippo's research is already a reference in Latin America for the study of the concept of trauma. His historical, serious and profound journey makes it essential.
Griselda Sanchez Zago, Instituto Freudiano para el Estudio de las Prácticas Psicoanalíticas (México); Asociación Psicoanalítica de Guadalajara; FEPAL; IPA; co-editor, Calibán

A lot has been written in recent years about trauma, either from a psychoanalytical perspective or from a historical point of view. Yet, so far, there were no significant studies dedicated to this capital concept in the history of psychoanalysis and even beyond... Not only does this ground-breaking piece by Luis Sanfelippo show the changing places of trauma in Freudian theory, in different contexts, but it also traces its medical origins back to the first railroad accidents and their objective and subjective consequences. For those willing to know how trauma became a key category to understand our time, this research, as precise as it is lively, will become a must-read.
Alejandro Dagfal, psychologist and historian; University of Buenos Aires; National Research Council and National Library, Argentina