The power of the trauma myth is undeniable. It validates mental suffering, provides meaning, and offers the hope of salvation. Yet behavioral genetics will tear this myth asunder.
The reverse causality idea is compelling to me because I have a family member with borderline personality disorder who tried to convince me that I had been abused, both as a child and as an adult. For example she told me that Child Protective Services had been called to check on me as a toddler (not true) and tried to recast a couple of experiences where a boyfriend was just being a bit neglectful as abusive. In another instance, I had a good friend with BPD who hadn't spoken to her father in over a year and consistently told me it was too painful to talk about. Finally, when pressed, she described the incident and it was just her father refusing to pay for her to get her car door fixed. Unsurprisingly, when I told her this didn't seem like a good reason for years of silent treatment, I got silent treatment for a week. Borderline Personality has such a strong impact on the culture, especially leftist culture, and it doesn't get talked about enough.
"The notion of trauma is another powerful tool our culture provides. It gives people meaning but also creates an alibi with the end result of a sense of entitlement."
A provocative thesis that aligns to my priors but i want to poke at a methodology question. It seems like the argument rests, pardon lay speak, on trauma self report being strongly predictive of BPD as among a pool of random people but weakly and then not at all predictive as among DZ and MZ twins (i.e. within a twin set an MZ twin who self reports trauma is not especially more likely to have BPD than a twin who doesn't). Do i have that basically right?
If so how do we weigh the reliability of the self report? Always thorny but self reports as among strangers seem somewhat reliable. Twin X reports trauma but twin Y doesnt on the other hand sounds much more likely to reflect different narratives, perceptions etc since the environment and risks are shared. I wonder if the argument turns on over reliance on self reported different experiences between cohabitational twins on a subject that people are not especially predictable interlocutors on. Curious how you think I should think about that concern.
Imagine living 200 years ago. Almost everyone had experienced traumas that make modern traumas look like child's play. Go further back in time. A child's earliest memory might be their father saying "yes, your brother was just eaten by a sabre tooth tiger".
Why hasn't evolution given us coping mechanisms? Perhaps it has but they are anti-social.
Ditto on Freud, who told his patients their memories of child abuse were only dreams.
As for causality, an 80 lb woman is more likely to suffer broken bones from an impact than a 200 lb man. However, her genes did not cause the break. The impact caused the break.
Neither are her genes defective, although they "dispose" her toward broken bones relative to the genes of a 200 lb man.
Some people are genetically more susceptible to trauma from an adverse experience, but the susceptibility is not the cause. The adverse experience is the cause.
Vulnerable people are often victimized and bullied, and it seems kind of logical that the bullying/victimization they experienced would cause them to develop mental disorders, but unless this can be proven scientifically, it's just a baseless theory. Correlation does not equal causation.
AFAIK, there is no good evidence that trauma causes any mental disorders except for PTSD. The people who end up being diagnosed with mental disorders would have developed them regardless of whether they were traumatized.
Another discrepancy relates to how correlation is ascribed through another psycholigical field of stusy, astrology, which presents anxieties about how to assess the term cusp, which also may shed light on how to regard an age group called "childhood."
Is there any way to get all this stuff repeated in a book chapter or academic review? I would like to rewrite the BPD wikipedia article to be just a tad more sane... but citing the sources you cite wouldn't be adequate because they are "primary" sources.
Some things are traumatic - like being shot at for instance - but of course the word gets trotted out now in the media in the most absurd contexts. I'm reminded of a wonderful radio play (many years ago). Two young men talking in a bar; one of them is telling his tale of woe and the other is innocently trying to counsel his friend - "have you ever thought of bottling it up" he says.
I would like the writers' opinion on the work of Dr. Alexander Lowen -a student of Wilhelm Reich. I suspect there is some connection between the matters discussed here and his central theses.
Great article!
The reverse causality idea is compelling to me because I have a family member with borderline personality disorder who tried to convince me that I had been abused, both as a child and as an adult. For example she told me that Child Protective Services had been called to check on me as a toddler (not true) and tried to recast a couple of experiences where a boyfriend was just being a bit neglectful as abusive. In another instance, I had a good friend with BPD who hadn't spoken to her father in over a year and consistently told me it was too painful to talk about. Finally, when pressed, she described the incident and it was just her father refusing to pay for her to get her car door fixed. Unsurprisingly, when I told her this didn't seem like a good reason for years of silent treatment, I got silent treatment for a week. Borderline Personality has such a strong impact on the culture, especially leftist culture, and it doesn't get talked about enough.
Nice piece. Your readers may be interested in my, similarly titled, piece, from a month ago: https://triangulation.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-trauma
"The notion of trauma is another powerful tool our culture provides. It gives people meaning but also creates an alibi with the end result of a sense of entitlement."
Nice!
Great article!
A provocative thesis that aligns to my priors but i want to poke at a methodology question. It seems like the argument rests, pardon lay speak, on trauma self report being strongly predictive of BPD as among a pool of random people but weakly and then not at all predictive as among DZ and MZ twins (i.e. within a twin set an MZ twin who self reports trauma is not especially more likely to have BPD than a twin who doesn't). Do i have that basically right?
If so how do we weigh the reliability of the self report? Always thorny but self reports as among strangers seem somewhat reliable. Twin X reports trauma but twin Y doesnt on the other hand sounds much more likely to reflect different narratives, perceptions etc since the environment and risks are shared. I wonder if the argument turns on over reliance on self reported different experiences between cohabitational twins on a subject that people are not especially predictable interlocutors on. Curious how you think I should think about that concern.
Really great article, thank you
Thank you for the kind words. --Bo
Imagine living 200 years ago. Almost everyone had experienced traumas that make modern traumas look like child's play. Go further back in time. A child's earliest memory might be their father saying "yes, your brother was just eaten by a sabre tooth tiger".
Why hasn't evolution given us coping mechanisms? Perhaps it has but they are anti-social.
Ditto on Freud, who told his patients their memories of child abuse were only dreams.
As for causality, an 80 lb woman is more likely to suffer broken bones from an impact than a 200 lb man. However, her genes did not cause the break. The impact caused the break.
Neither are her genes defective, although they "dispose" her toward broken bones relative to the genes of a 200 lb man.
Some people are genetically more susceptible to trauma from an adverse experience, but the susceptibility is not the cause. The adverse experience is the cause.
Vulnerable people are often victimized and bullied, and it seems kind of logical that the bullying/victimization they experienced would cause them to develop mental disorders, but unless this can be proven scientifically, it's just a baseless theory. Correlation does not equal causation.
AFAIK, there is no good evidence that trauma causes any mental disorders except for PTSD. The people who end up being diagnosed with mental disorders would have developed them regardless of whether they were traumatized.
Another discrepancy relates to how correlation is ascribed through another psycholigical field of stusy, astrology, which presents anxieties about how to assess the term cusp, which also may shed light on how to regard an age group called "childhood."
Is there any way to get all this stuff repeated in a book chapter or academic review? I would like to rewrite the BPD wikipedia article to be just a tad more sane... but citing the sources you cite wouldn't be adequate because they are "primary" sources.
Some things are traumatic - like being shot at for instance - but of course the word gets trotted out now in the media in the most absurd contexts. I'm reminded of a wonderful radio play (many years ago). Two young men talking in a bar; one of them is telling his tale of woe and the other is innocently trying to counsel his friend - "have you ever thought of bottling it up" he says.
I would like the writers' opinion on the work of Dr. Alexander Lowen -a student of Wilhelm Reich. I suspect there is some connection between the matters discussed here and his central theses.
Thank you. Appreciate it. My brother, Ben Winegard, deserves most of the credit. --Bo