Abstract

This article addresses the tension in psychoanalytic thinking regarding adult-onset trauma and its potential effects on children who were not directly exposed to the same parental trauma. Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes early attachment trauma as predictive of the response to trauma later in life. This emphasis on early trauma delayed recognition of adult-onset trauma-related disorders and the development of adequate trauma-focused treatments.

Efforts to better understand sexual victimization experiences among male populations have been chiefly absent (Spataro, Moss, & Wells, 2001; Stermac, Sheridan, Davidson, & Dunn, 1996). ). Research indicates that approximately 1 in 71 men in the United States (i.e., 1.6 million men) have been raped in their lifetime, and nearly 1 in 5 men (i.e., 25 million men) have experienced sexual victimization other than rape in their lifetime (Black, Basile, Breiding, Smith, Walters, Merrick, Chen, & Stevens, 2011).

Recently, a dissociative subtype of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been included in the DSM-5. This review focuses on the clinical and neurobiological features that distinguish the dissociative subtype of PTSD from non-dissociative PTSD. Clinically, the dissociative subtype of PTSD is associated with high PTSD severity, predominance of derealization and depersonalization symptoms, a more significant history of early life trauma, and higher levels of comorbid psychiatric disorders.