Freud's Theory of Trauma

For Freud, if external violence gets too strong, we simply exit the psychic domain proper. The choice is either the shock is reintegrated into a pre-existing libidinal frame, or the shock destroys psyche and nothing is left. So what Freud cannot envisage is that the victim as it were survives its own death. All different forms of traumatic encounters lead to the same result. A new subject is emerging today which survived its own death with no symbolic identity. This subject lives death as a form of life. His life is death drive embodied. A life deprived of erotic engagement. 21st century will be the century of post-traumatic disengaged subjects whose first emblematic figure was death