THE mind wraps itself around losing a job, one of life’s great traumas, in jagged and swerving fits. When the call comes in, when rumor turns to reality, when it’s not the broker in the next cubicle but you who is presented with a stack of severance papers, the psyche takes over.

It goes numb. It goes into survival mode. Fear quickly turns into anger. For some, there may be relief in saying goodbye to what therapists call the “psychological terror” that has haunted the corridors of troubled financial institutions since last summer. But what follows  the unknown  may be no less frightening.

Since August, banks worldwide have announced plans to eliminate as many as 65,000 jobs. Many losing their jobs now have lived through other crises on Wall Street  the 1987 market crash, the widespread layoffs of the early 1990s and the financial upheaval of 1998. But investment bankers, recruiters and psychologists say the current economic downturn, the cascade of layoffs and the steady beat of grim financial news have exacted an especially daunting psychic price.

“These are people’s lives,” said an investment banker in his 30s who was laid off in November from his job at a Bank of America office in New York. “It’s not head count. We’re not cattle.”