The concept of psychological injury as psychotrauma was introduced about years ago by Pierre Janet โ The French philosopher, psychiatrist and psychotherapist Janet recognised that unprocessed psychological shocks lead to repetitions and reenactments of the experience 1. In this sense, the body is regarded and treated in anthroposophical psychotherapy as consisting life, soul and spirit bodies in development 2.
Depending on the image of the human being and the understanding of pathogenesis, many independent methods and therapeutic approaches to trauma treatment have developed in recent years. Anthroposophical psychotherapy is characterised above all by the psychotherapeutic process being part of an interdisciplinary and integrative treatment concept.
Depending on the individual needs of the patient, anthroposophical therapeutic treatments in nursing, art and movement therapies, and medical support are included. Trauma is experienced as a severe mental shock or as an existential borderline experience with the experience of death. In this sense, Gottfried Fischer and Peter Riedesser define trauma as "a vital experience of discrepancy between threatening situational factors and the individual's ability to cope, which is accompanied by feelings of helplessness and defenceless abandonment and thus causes a permanent shattering of the understanding of self and the world" 8.
In everyday clinical practice, however, it is not always easy to recognise traumatised persons as such. Often the patient themselves is not aware of the connection of their symptoms โ such as persistent nervousness, impulsivity, sleep disorders, depression or anxiety โ with underlying traumatising events in their biography.
Psychological trauma does not arise from experiencing bad events, but what is decisive is how the events can be processed and integrated into life. Thus there is a wide range of trauma sequelae and the associated health impairments. Family factors and the circumstances that accompany childhood development predispose different individual coping skills.
