Re "trauma" in "The Coddling of the American Mind" (p.25, hardcover): "In the early versions of the [DSM], ... 'trauma' [meant] a physical agent causing physical damage.."

I've just started reading the book and it's very good so far. But I wanted to point out something about that quote.

1. Before 1980 "trauma" was clearly used as psychological damage. I remembered something from the LP "Inside Shelley Berman". One routine began with a couple of minutes about a child psychologist. Among other things, Berman said that the psychologist advised a parent not to punish a child for stealing because that would give the child a "trauma". That's not an authoritative cite, of course. But it shows the word was fairly well-known even then. Maybe it comes from Freud.

2. This is the OED's first print cite for a form of the word "trauma" meaning psychological injury: "1894 W. James in Psychol. Rev. 1 199 Certain reminiscences of the shock fall into the subliminal consciousness, where they can only be discovered in ‘hypnoid’ states. If left there, they act as permanent ‘psychic traumata’, thorns in the spirit, so to speak."

3. The footnote for the quote from "Coddling" links to a page on psychiatry.org about the "history of the DSM". The only information on that page related to "trauma" there is in the term "post-traumatic stress disorder".