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[[Psychological ]] [[trauma ]] is a type of damage to the [[psyche ]] that occurs as a result of a [[traumatic ]] [[event]]. A traumatic event involves a [[singular ]] [[experience ]] or enduring event or events that completely overwhelm the [[individual]]'s ability to cope or integrate the [[ideas ]] and emotions involved with that experience. Trauma can be caused by a wide variety of events, but there are a few common aspects. It usually involves a [[complete ]] [[feeling ]] of [[helplessness ]] in the face of a [[real ]] or [[subjective ]] [[threat ]] to [[life]], [[bodily ]] integrity, or sanity. There is frequently a violation of the person's familiar ideas [[about ]] the [[world]], putting the person in a [[state ]] of extreme confusion and insecurity. This is often seen when [[people ]] or institutions depended on for survival violate or betray the person in some unforseen way.

Psychological trauma may accompany [[physical ]] trauma or [[exist ]] independently of it. Typical causes of psychological trauma are abuse, [[violence]], the threat of either, or the witnessing of either, particularly in [[childhood]]. Catastropic events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, war or [[other ]] mass violence can also [[cause ]] psychological trauma. Long-term exposure to situations such as extreme poverty or milder forms of abuse, such as [[verbal ]] abuse, can be traumatic (though verbal abuse can also potentially be traumatic as a single event). In some cases, even a person's own actions, such as committing rape, can be traumatic for the offender as well as the [[victim]], especially if the offender feels [[helpless ]] to [[control ]] the urge to commit such crimes.

It should be noted, however, that different people will react differently to similar events. One person may perceive an event to be traumatic that [[another ]] may not, and not all people who experience a traumatic event will become psychologically traumatized.

[[French ]] neurologist [[Jean-Martin Charcot]] argued that psychological trauma was the origin of all instances of the [[mental ]] [[illness ]] known as [[hysteria]]. Charcot's "traumatic hysteria" often manifested as a [[paralysis ]] that followed a physical trauma, typically years later after what Charcot described as a period of "incubation".

[[Sigmund Freud]], Charcot's student and the [[father ]] of [[psychoanalysis]], examined the [[concept ]] of psychological trauma throughout his career. [[Jean Laplanche]] has given a general description of [[Freud]]'s [[understanding ]] of trauma, which varied significantly over the course of Freud's career: "An event in the [[subject]]'s life, defined by its intensity, by the subject's incapacity to respond adequately to it and by the upheaval and long-lasting effects that it brings about in the [[psychical ]] organisation".