The Trauma Lineage

Trauma is not a single therapeutic tradition — it is a phenomenon that forced every tradition to adapt. What makes this lineage unique is that it draws from psychoanalysis, behaviorism, neuroscience, somatic therapy, and dissociation research simultaneously. Pierre Janet described dissociation and traumatic memory in the 1880s. Freud initially agreed, then retreated to fantasy. The field forgot trauma for decades. Vietnam veterans, the feminist movement, and disaster research brought it back. The diagnosis of PTSD in 1980 created a clinical category; the treatments that followed — Prolonged Exposure, CPT, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy — draw from different parent traditions but converge on the same clinical reality: what happens when experience overwhelms the capacity to integrate it.