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Evidence Based Treatments for Trauma-Related Psychological Disorders pp 41–61Cite as

Psychological and Social Theories of PTSD

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Abstract

Psychological theories have been developed to explain why certain trauma survivors go on to develop posttraumatic stress disorder and others do not. These theories try to capture what happens at the level of the trauma survivor’s personal experiences, in terms of thoughts, memory, emotions, behaviours, and underlying processes of which the person is unaware. Moreover, psychological theories are essential to understanding the working mechanisms of psychotherapy for posttraumatic stress disorder. In this chapter, we successively focus on theories of fear conditioning, dual representation theory, cognitive theory and ‘hotspots’, psychodynamic theories, and posttraumatic stress disorder from a social and societal perspective. The most important concepts used by these theories are discussed, followed by their accounts of natural recovery and their proposed working mechanisms for psychological treatments.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Center for Psychological Trauma, Academic Medical Center at the University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 5, 1105 AZ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Mirjam J. Nijdam

  2. International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, Stromstraße 3, 10555, Berlin, Germany

    Lutz Wittmann

Authors
  1. Mirjam J. Nijdam
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  2. Lutz Wittmann
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Correspondence to Mirjam J. Nijdam .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Ulrich Schnyder

  2. Dissemination & Training Division, National Center for PTSD, San Franciso, California, USA

    Marylène Cloitre

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Nijdam, M.J., Wittmann, L. (2015). Psychological and Social Theories of PTSD. In: Schnyder, U., Cloitre, M. (eds) Evidence Based Treatments for Trauma-Related Psychological Disorders. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07109-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07109-1_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-07109-1

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