[Posttraumatic stress disorder: meaningful changes in DSM-5].

UNLABELLED: The fact that posttraumatic stress disorder is a very important construct in public health and opinion, especially in the United States of America, has veiled it dubious specificity and problematic universality.

HYPOTHESIS: the abandon of Freudian theory since 1980 was correlative of a permanent revision of criteria to define "traumatic" in DSM versions, as well as of revaluation of ancient theory of dissociation.

METHOD: most meaningful changes introduced in PTSD criteria are critically reviewed from DSM-IV to DSM-5. "Traumatic", symptoms and dissociative estates, and a new preschool children subtype are revised.

CONCLUSION: "Traumatic" yet being an artificial criterion is steel needed in order to keep the construct as a whole. Dissociative estates occupy an important place for the American authors and have turned more visible in DSM-5 than in previous DSM. New chapter "Trauma and stressor disorders" and new descriptions about PTSD support an enlarged clinical view of "traumatic". Inconsistencies found between reviews considered for PTSD in DSM-5 show that different work groups contribute to the construction of the disorder with fragmentary and divorced parts from one another.