I think that this impulse to put boundaries around "trauma" as this article seems to want to do is basically reactionary and unhelpful. The author complains that "these ideas...posit a ubiquity of trauma that seems to leave hardly anyone in the “non-traumatized” category." But they don't explain why they feel that it is important to have a "non-traumatized" category. Perhaps to some extent, to be a human is to experience trauma -- or, at least, to be human in the modern age of capitalist catastrophe. And it is a spectrum, not a binary. The author complains that right wingers have adopted the concept. They write this as if its a criticism of van der Kolk: "In fact, rather than treating trauma as an ideological weapon of the left, now the right wants in on it too." But if der Kolk's theory is correct, why would it cleave to people of one political tendency? People of all persuasions have experienced trauma, of course. This criticism doesn't make sense, if you stop to think about it. It smacks of the "false memory syndrome" people of the 90s, discussed here, who I think did a lot of damage in their quest to defend abusers from facing any accountability. Even today there are some people who think that DID isn't a "real" diagnosis even though there's been plenty of empirical support for it since the eighties. Its stigmatizing and gaslighting. The author seems to want to resurrect this old reactionary handwringing & pearlclutching that only ends up invalidating people and hurting them.
These are conversations that can framed the way they do because of capitalism. Even that class I'm teaching, the "Severe Mental Illness" class, when it finally came time to figure out how to introduce the topic I realized that when it comes down to it SMI is a financial category more than anything else. "SMI" costs the economy more money than other "mental illnesses" so even though it lumps in a bunch of different and complex life experiences it goes under the same title. Not really the makings of a good evidenced based clinical workbook but maybe a good way to teach counseling students how to evaluate and understand the system they're working in.
This article and your analysis got me thinking about something I've been thinking about a lot in recent years: how there's this tension between truth and utility and how it seems we are in a moment where things are tipped towards prioritizing utility over truth. This is questionable as a dichotomy in a way because truth is itself very useful and always produces good outcomes in the long run when you stick to it. But a key bit there to notice is "in the long run". Sometimes we get situations where in the short run, heck maybe even in the medium-long-run, operating in a certain way will reduce a lot of suffering, but in order to act in that way we have to be willing to act with minds/hearts that center something other than truth as the top priority. Here I'm thinking of the pressure alluded to in the article to sort of, erm, "make PTSD real" because you want to alleviate the real suffering of veterans.
Looking at your analysis through this lens, it starts to seem like there are two different parts of you with different perspectives on (what could be called) the truthfulness vs. utility dichotomy. It seems there is a part of you that wants to "change the way people think about power" and spread the benefits trauma informed models can bring to your clients, and is in fact so set on this goal that, within this part of yourself, anyway, truthfulness has been displaced as the top priority/motivation. Then it seems there is a part of you that appreciates the critique in the article on the basis of there actually being something (some truth) to it.
The orientation of a person's psyche towards truth itself is such a deep and profound thing it's importance for both the individual and humanity at large probably cannot be overstated. If you think there might be something to what I am saying, a way forward in exploring this for yourself could be to explore it in an IFS context. See if you can indeed find a part that values (perceived/short-term) utility over truth--this would be the part that is passionate about changing the way people think about power and giving people the benefits the trauma informed modalities can bring (this could be two separate parts maybe)--and if you can, see if you can find the origins of it and what this part wants and all the other good IFS things you might want to explore. Then see if you can find a part of yourself that prioritizes truth above all else and explore that.
I apologize if this got too personal or comes across as me unfairly psychoanalyzing you from a distance. But I do so because I see the pattern and consider it to be of incredible importance. Thanks for sharing this very interesting article and analysis. Be well.
I appreciate that you took the time to reflect on this piece, I have a short response: I don't think "truth" is as straight forward as you're making it sound. I've been around too long and read too much post modern theory to be anything but skeptical of capital T "Truth." I think a lot of different smaller t "truths" can co-exists together, and it's important to always look at the power connected to what's called the "truth." Do I know you?
So for myself, I can’t think about anything in a way I feel I can justify without somewhere in the background of that having truth as a valid concept and guiding light. To my mind, I don’t see how one can get away from holding truth as a valid concept/guiding light without creating an opening for untruths (inaccuracies, we could say) to at least potentially enter in, which feels like a kind of concerning risk. Because I subscribe to a notion of truth-ultimately-helpful-untruth-ultimately-harmful, this feels in conflict with the principle of do no harm, and I sense at least the beginnings of this in the article (though, for what it's worth, not in what most of what you say in your analysis about power and how that intersects with mental-health-world). This doesn’t mean that a ton of people can’t believe something is true that later is discovered to have been untrue the whole time and to have come into understanding as being true for reasons relating to power. My diagnosis of this would be it was not valuing/believing in truth that lead to that situation of mass deception in the first place.
But, hey, I can’t read your mind and heart, obviously. I got the sense from what you wrote that you were experiencing inner conflict around something this article was bringing up, and my intuition was that this question of truth seemed like it was probably relevant to that conflict. I could be wrong. If you are fully, deeply sold on the invalidity of the concept of truth, then my analysis is simply wrong.
And we have met yeah, I’m trying to keep a low-er internet profile but I’ll private message you and tell you who I am if I can figure out how to do that lol
I think that this impulse to put boundaries around "trauma" as this article seems to want to do is basically reactionary and unhelpful. The author complains that "these ideas...posit a ubiquity of trauma that seems to leave hardly anyone in the “non-traumatized” category." But they don't explain why they feel that it is important to have a "non-traumatized" category. Perhaps to some extent, to be a human is to experience trauma -- or, at least, to be human in the modern age of capitalist catastrophe. And it is a spectrum, not a binary. The author complains that right wingers have adopted the concept. They write this as if its a criticism of van der Kolk: "In fact, rather than treating trauma as an ideological weapon of the left, now the right wants in on it too." But if der Kolk's theory is correct, why would it cleave to people of one political tendency? People of all persuasions have experienced trauma, of course. This criticism doesn't make sense, if you stop to think about it. It smacks of the "false memory syndrome" people of the 90s, discussed here, who I think did a lot of damage in their quest to defend abusers from facing any accountability. Even today there are some people who think that DID isn't a "real" diagnosis even though there's been plenty of empirical support for it since the eighties. Its stigmatizing and gaslighting. The author seems to want to resurrect this old reactionary handwringing & pearlclutching that only ends up invalidating people and hurting them.
These are conversations that can framed the way they do because of capitalism. Even that class I'm teaching, the "Severe Mental Illness" class, when it finally came time to figure out how to introduce the topic I realized that when it comes down to it SMI is a financial category more than anything else. "SMI" costs the economy more money than other "mental illnesses" so even though it lumps in a bunch of different and complex life experiences it goes under the same title. Not really the makings of a good evidenced based clinical workbook but maybe a good way to teach counseling students how to evaluate and understand the system they're working in.
I think people always jump to ‘critique’ as a mode of discourse because we’ve been trained towards endless scepticism
This article and your analysis got me thinking about something I've been thinking about a lot in recent years: how there's this tension between truth and utility and how it seems we are in a moment where things are tipped towards prioritizing utility over truth. This is questionable as a dichotomy in a way because truth is itself very useful and always produces good outcomes in the long run when you stick to it. But a key bit there to notice is "in the long run". Sometimes we get situations where in the short run, heck maybe even in the medium-long-run, operating in a certain way will reduce a lot of suffering, but in order to act in that way we have to be willing to act with minds/hearts that center something other than truth as the top priority. Here I'm thinking of the pressure alluded to in the article to sort of, erm, "make PTSD real" because you want to alleviate the real suffering of veterans.
Looking at your analysis through this lens, it starts to seem like there are two different parts of you with different perspectives on (what could be called) the truthfulness vs. utility dichotomy. It seems there is a part of you that wants to "change the way people think about power" and spread the benefits trauma informed models can bring to your clients, and is in fact so set on this goal that, within this part of yourself, anyway, truthfulness has been displaced as the top priority/motivation. Then it seems there is a part of you that appreciates the critique in the article on the basis of there actually being something (some truth) to it.
The orientation of a person's psyche towards truth itself is such a deep and profound thing it's importance for both the individual and humanity at large probably cannot be overstated. If you think there might be something to what I am saying, a way forward in exploring this for yourself could be to explore it in an IFS context. See if you can indeed find a part that values (perceived/short-term) utility over truth--this would be the part that is passionate about changing the way people think about power and giving people the benefits the trauma informed modalities can bring (this could be two separate parts maybe)--and if you can, see if you can find the origins of it and what this part wants and all the other good IFS things you might want to explore. Then see if you can find a part of yourself that prioritizes truth above all else and explore that.
I apologize if this got too personal or comes across as me unfairly psychoanalyzing you from a distance. But I do so because I see the pattern and consider it to be of incredible importance. Thanks for sharing this very interesting article and analysis. Be well.
I appreciate that you took the time to reflect on this piece, I have a short response: I don't think "truth" is as straight forward as you're making it sound. I've been around too long and read too much post modern theory to be anything but skeptical of capital T "Truth." I think a lot of different smaller t "truths" can co-exists together, and it's important to always look at the power connected to what's called the "truth." Do I know you?
So for myself, I can’t think about anything in a way I feel I can justify without somewhere in the background of that having truth as a valid concept and guiding light. To my mind, I don’t see how one can get away from holding truth as a valid concept/guiding light without creating an opening for untruths (inaccuracies, we could say) to at least potentially enter in, which feels like a kind of concerning risk. Because I subscribe to a notion of truth-ultimately-helpful-untruth-ultimately-harmful, this feels in conflict with the principle of do no harm, and I sense at least the beginnings of this in the article (though, for what it's worth, not in what most of what you say in your analysis about power and how that intersects with mental-health-world). This doesn’t mean that a ton of people can’t believe something is true that later is discovered to have been untrue the whole time and to have come into understanding as being true for reasons relating to power. My diagnosis of this would be it was not valuing/believing in truth that lead to that situation of mass deception in the first place.
But, hey, I can’t read your mind and heart, obviously. I got the sense from what you wrote that you were experiencing inner conflict around something this article was bringing up, and my intuition was that this question of truth seemed like it was probably relevant to that conflict. I could be wrong. If you are fully, deeply sold on the invalidity of the concept of truth, then my analysis is simply wrong.
And we have met yeah, I’m trying to keep a low-er internet profile but I’ll private message you and tell you who I am if I can figure out how to do that lol