From the author: Notes on psychoanalysisZ. Freud, already in his first studies, and, first of all, in joint work with Joseph Breuer (“Studies on Hysteria”), began to develop the hypothesis of his teacher, French psychiatrist Jean Martin Charcot, about the psychogenic origin of some mental disorders, and, in particular, hysteria . In contrast to the tendency in psychiatry that existed at that time to focus on the natural science paradigm in search of clinical classifications of mental illnesses according to the etiopathogenetic principle, some adherents of which still spend a lot of effort searching for the morphological, biochemical, infectious basis of the occurrence of mental disorders, and believe, following Emil Kraepelin, the founder of modern psychiatry, that mental illness, like all other diseases, must be caused by viruses, bacteria, physical trauma, toxins and other natural scientific factors that determine specific symptoms. Freud, on the contrary, was interested primarily in the source and cause of neuroses, mental trauma. By which in psychoanalysis we mean, according to the “Dictionary-Reference Book of Psychoanalysis” by Leibin V.M., “deep and painful experiences of a person caused by any events in his life, as well as extreme accumulations of excitations with which he cannot cope or which are partially are overcome through unconscious defense mechanisms leading to the formation of neurotic symptoms.” According to Freud: “A traumatic effect can be caused by any event that causes a painful feeling of horror, fear, shame, mental pain...”, and whether this event acquires the “character of trauma” ", "depends on the susceptibility of the victim." However, Freud emphasized that it is not always possible to trace the cause-and-effect relationship of a patient’s suffering with the “traumatic event” that causes it. Moreover, “it happens that circumstances, seemingly harmless in themselves, due to their coincidence with a truly important event or a moment of particular irritability, acquire the meaning of trauma, which they could not otherwise acquire, but which - since then - has been retained.” According to the “Dictionary of Psychoanalysis” by Laplanche J., Pontalis J.-B., in addition to the special “sensitivity” of the subject, for the occurrence of mental “trauma as such” (i.e., a situation in which an unreacted experience gets stuck in the psyche as a “foreign body”) some objective conditions are also needed. Of course, an event may, by its very nature, preclude a complete response (for example, the “irreparable loss of a loved one”). However, if we do not take extreme cases, the traumatic significance of an event is determined by specific circumstances: these may be the special psychological state of the subject at the time of the event (“Breuer’s hypnoid state”); real situation - social circumstances, pressing tasks that do not allow adequate reactions or prevent them (“containment”); finally, and above all (according to Freud), a mental conflict that does not allow the subject to include this experience in his conscious personality (“defense”).” And, further, it should be noted that Breuer and Freud also noted that “a whole series of events , each of which individually is not capable of causing injury, can cause it in combination (“summation”).” In other words, in the patient’s life history, often “several partial traumas are discovered, forming a group of incidents that only together could have a traumatic effect.” Drawing an analogy with physical trauma, Freud writes in “Studies on Hysteria”: “Psychic trauma or the memory of it acts like a foreign body, which, after penetration inside, remains an active factor for a long time.” At the same time, Freud drew attention to the fact that the symptoms caused by mental trauma disappeared in the patient “when it was possible to clearly recall in his memory