Traumatic Neurosis Revisited

“Drawing on his years of clinical experience and an expert knowledge of Lacan, Leslie Chapman’s book proposes a bold and far-reaching reinterpretation of trauma, and along with it a new understanding of the human condition itself.”

—Professor Peter Hallward, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London, UK

“Through innovative readings of Freud, Lacan and Laplanche, Chapman offers a coherent and refreshing critical response to a reactive concept of trauma and a compelling outline of how psychoanalytic theory can be utilised and revived both therapeutically and critically.”

—Dr Alastair Morgan, University of Manchester, UK

This book argues that Freud’s theory of the traumatic neuroses can provide a ‘conceptual bridge’ between the Lacanian idea of an ‘inaugural’ or ‘founding’ trauma that constitutes the human subject and the more popular idea that trauma is brought about by external events like war or sexual violence. It proposes a new reading of Freud’s theory which draws on Lacanian concepts, including the Real, jouissance, the idea of ‘suture’, and Lacan’s ‘deconstruction’ of Freud’s drive theory. It also argues for a ‘cybernetic’ reading of Lacan’s theory of language, which he outlined in his second Seminar; and for a reappraisal of Freud’s concept of Nachträglichkeit as a way to facilitate a better understanding of the retroactive nature of trauma and its relation to language and the drive.

In doing so, it offers a challenge to key assumptions underpinning the dominant discourse of trauma. In particular it challenges the idea that trauma is something that simply ‘happens’ to human beings and that its effects that can be eradicated through the construction of various forms of trauma narrative. This book sheds new light on the relationship between the traumatic effects of the signifier and the impact of the ‘external’ world. It will be of interest to practitioners, as well as to students and scholars of psychoanalysis and philosophy.

Leslie Chapman is a psychoanalyst based in north Hampshire, UK. Dr Chapman has a particular interest in trauma and psychosis and how these link to the teachings of the ‘later Lacan’. His clinical work within this field formed the basis for his PhD thesis which was on the topic of traumatic neurosis and its relation to Freudian and Lacanian theory.