Trauma, dissociation and somatization

Abstract

In this paper, a way of accounting the traumatic experience, its effects on the individual, and the ways to help its assimilation with special reference to somatization is described. A dynamic model that puts the traumatic experiences in relation with the subject, and the processes through which both the subject and the experience become what they are, is contrary to the current medical model organized on the basis of the nosological categories described in the DSM and ICD classifications. A model of development of the self-in-relation, which can account for the character and extension of the effect of experience through different systems of meaning is explained.