Childhood Trauma?

There is a very common idea that in childhood a person experiences a trauma – which causes a mark for life. Psychology, then, would help to overcome this trauma.

Actually, it’s not like that! In this text you will learn more about the emergence of childhood – because the idea of ​​childhood did not exist until very recently – and also how the concept of childhood trauma emerged and how psychoanalysis and psychology currently work on this issue.

There is a book widely used in Human Sciences (in psychology, pedagogy, history) called Social History of Children and Family, by the weekend historian Phillipe Ariès.

The book historically shows the constitution of the family from the 15th to the 18th century and the role of the school and the “concept” of childhood in this process.

In England in the Middle Ages children were sent to work at the age of seven and were called apprentices. This treatment took place in all families, regardless of fortune, at the same time that they sent their children to other homes, received boys or girls in theirs.

This type of life was probably common in the medieval West, where learning was confused with domestic service. The child learned through practice, not only the knowledge of the master who received it, but also moral values.

As the transmission of “knowledge” was practical and from one generation to another, there was no place for the school. In this way, the child fully participated in the lives of adults. There was no segregation of children, as would later happen.

In other words, there was no notion of childhood that we have today. A child was a small adult, a small adult and treated as such.

At that time, the family could not feed a deep existential feeling between parents and children, it was a moral and social reality more than a sentimental one.

From the 15th century, this reality began to change, slowly, with the expansion of school attendance. From that time on, education was provided more by the school.

At the same time, families no longer wanted to be separated from their babies and began to bring wet nurses into their homes. Thus, children grew up and learned civility through contact with their families.

The word “civil” was almost synonymous with our modern “social”. There was, from the 16th to the 18th century, a literature on civility, the courtesy treaties or manuals, in which people learned how to behave in society.

During this period, the school developed and childhood became more specific.

In the second half of the 17th century, the family was already organized around children. The first modern family was that of wealthy and important men. However, there was still a great deal of socialization, not having room for the creation of greater intimacy.

Until the 17th century, social density prohibited isolation. Only in the 18th century did the family begin to keep society at a distance. The organization of the houses began to correspond to this new preoccupation with the world. The independence of the rooms and the comfort came together with intimacy, isolation, discretion.

The specialization of rooms, in the families of the nobility and the bourgeoisie, was one of the biggest changes in people’s daily lives. That is, until very recently there were no single rooms – everyone lived in the same space. Furthermore, the house was an extension of the street and was always open to the neighbors.

From the 18th century, worldly life, professional life and private life began to be separated, and a new code of good manners emerged, called politeness, which required description and respect for the privacy of others.

The child has become an indispensable element of everyday life and adults have become concerned about their education, career and future.

As the transformations in society modified the school, learning, customs, the child’s relationship with the family and the family with it constituted an important factor in the emergence of the modern family.

Childhood Trauma

In recent centuries, therefore, the way people treated children began to change. Childhood as we understand it today also emerged with the creation of fundamental and obligatory schools – initially a demand from Protestants who wanted people to be able to read the Bible without the intermediary of priests.

Sigmund Freud developed the concept of childhood trauma early in his career as a psychoanalyst. According to his initial research, the neurotic adult – with psychic problems and symptoms – would have gone through one or more traumatic events in early childhood.

These events were already related to the idea of ​​the Oedipus Complex.

However, after further research, Freud realized that in fact, there were no such traumas. Or even better, bad experiences could even happen – but what mattered most for the emergence of neurosis was the patient’s unconscious fantasy.

In other words, the trauma has lost importance as the cause of the problem. The problem, then, would no longer be the trauma (the event that happened in the past) but the unconscious fantasy of the past.

With that, psychoanalysis no longer works today with the idea of ​​trauma and trauma solution. Psychoanalysts work with the idea of ​​symptom and unconscious fantasy (or ghost).

Getting to the unconscious fantasy that is the origin of the symptoms – is what allows the patient to free himself from his suffering.

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