One of the rules of medicine, in fact probably, one of the rules of life is that the more names something has the less we know about it. These terms, in no particular order are all names we’ve given to people’s reaction to bad things, many are still in use.

It’s worth highlighting this early in the talk because it will become fairly apparent as you research the psychological reactions to trauma, that we still don’t know to much about what is going on.

Psychiatry has a lot of this. For many people its one of the frustrations of psychiatry. For me its one of the best things about it. Who wants to work in an area where all the answers to the big questions are known?