In this essay, two contemporary psychological perspectives: the behavioral perspective and the psychoanalytic perspective, will be discussed in relation to their particular methods of understanding Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and traumatic stress. PTSD may arise from traumatic experiences such as rape and physical violence within homes or communities, and could be treated using the psychoanalytic therapeutic approach’s free association and dream analysis techniques. Traumatic stress is defined as the disturbances that occur in a person after that person has experienced a situation of traumatic nature, traumatic stress can be observed as the depression or anxiety that develops as a result of the event and could also be observed in other disorders developing, such as PTSD (Swartz, de la Rey, Duncan, Townsend & O’Neill, 2016). PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that may arise after one has experienced or witnessed a traumatic event (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2018). Diagnosis of PTSD requires the patient to meet the criteria: the patient must have been exposed to a traumatic event (whether it is the patient experiencing the trauma, the patient learning of a family member or friend experiencing the trauma, the patient witnessing the trauma or the patient indirectly hearing of the trauma as a result of their occupation), the event …show more content…
t be re-experienced through nightmares, unwelcome memories, anxiety or depression due to unwanted reminders and so on, the traumatic stress must be stimulated by trauma-related thoughts, feelings and reminders, the trauma must cause negative feelings of guilt, shame, isolation and blame as well as loss of memory relating to the event and the patient may be easily