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Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

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Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#51

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

pjc50 wrote: post #44
papeda wrote: post #3

On a related note, a while ago I read a little about how ancient families coped with the deaths of their children. My takeaway, pretty much cribbed from this article [1], was that such deaths produced less trauma than they would today because: (1) More families lost children. This lessened the trauma because a family could talk to other nearby families who had experienced the same thing. Those families would also be…

I would like to raise a frame challenge: what if instead trauma was ubiquitous? It's not fatal and rarely debilitating. It does affect people's happiness and behaviour throughout their lives. It does not leave traces in the bones or DNA. How would we find an un-traumatized person in a world where injury, sickness and death were far more prevalent at all ages? Much traditional childrearing practice that's supposed to…

> "People would refuse to show PTSD symptoms under the threat of violence."

Doesn't the plight of homeless veterans today demonstrate that PTSD and mental illness is not something that can be easily hidden, even under threat of violence?

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#52

Post by naravara »

quezzle wrote: post #29
papeda wrote: post #3

On a related note, a while ago I read a little about how ancient families coped with the deaths of their children. My takeaway, pretty much cribbed from this article [1], was that such deaths produced less trauma than they would today because: (1) More families lost children. This lessened the trauma because a family could talk to other nearby families who had experienced the same thing. Those families would also be…

Do you have kids? It’s a very strange idea that somehow mothers loved their children any less in times past. I wonder if your opinion is from someone with kids or not.

>It’s a very strange idea that somehow mothers loved their children any less in times past.

It doesn't mean they loved their children less. It means they had a different bar before they considered them full-fledged "children." In lots of cultures they don't name kids for a few days or weeks. In pre-modern China, infanticide within the first few days of birth was considered a normal, though regrettable, form of birth control. There's even the story about how Spartans used to leave children who were too sickly to the wolves.

You can see this sliding standard in modern times too with the abortion debate. Some evangelicals get VERY intense about the life of the fetus in utero. For some of the more hardcore ones, even very early stage miscarriages get funerals and the zygote gets regarded with all the honors that a child would have been. In their minds, an abortion is infanticide without a doubt. Meanwhile, other people think of it as a routine medical procedure and think the evangelical position is parodic on the level of "Every Sperm is Sacred."

But overall, the point isn't that they didn't feel the feelings. It's that they had better ways of processing and working through them.

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#53

Post by sorokod »

I would suggest that some forms of medieval entertainment would cause PTSD in a modern person. From public executions, through bear baiting[1] and cat torture[2].

The (unstated) assumption the people in the past "were just like us" emotionally, deserves closer scrutiny.

I believe that the magnitude of trauma inflicted by a certain experience is relative to what is considered to be the norm in the time and place. The norms of "ancient" people were different from those of the 21st century

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear-baiting

[2] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ritualistic-cat-tortur...

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#54

Post by lidHanteyk »

third_I wrote: post #33
lidHanteyk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your own first two points are in conflict. Either humans from the past raised in today's world would be like today's humans, or like the past's humans. Pick one.

No, it's precisely the same idea. Biology did not change. Perceptions and expression of it did change. It does not mean the inner biological processes are any different, just the way you consciously select what to say about them. Absence of words (context) means you cannot express certain things; does not mean you don't actually feel them. Romantic love for instance is a quite modern thing, the way we speak of it tod…

Oh, I didn't downvote you. I replied instead. I'm used to systems that punish voting and replying in the same thread. Indeed, I won't ever downvote folks like you, since I'm usually punished by that very same system. Instead, I will shove words into your ears and drag you, kicking and screaming, to reason.

I gave you a worthy counter-argument; I gave you a single-sentence dilemma which was intended to refute your entire platform. You may want to re-read Pirsig's thoughts on dilemmas [4] before you reply.

The entirety of psychology, as a theory, is based upon cultural assumptions about inner experiences. There are important arguments against the ideas that people have inner experiences [0], that people are thinking when they talk [1], that therapy is effective due to its design rather than due to being a safe place to reflect [2], and even that mental disorders exist as opposed to being part of the spectrum of the human condition [3].

If you cannot tackle these foundational issues at all times, then your arguments ought to be considered no more strongly than the original author, by your own words, since you are not a psychologist either.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanism

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Horns_of_a_dilemma

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#55

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #47
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's actually a pretty effective way for overwriting/replacing your bad memories with something new. Less drastic / and practical examples: Say you went through a really bad breakup and your partner let you down by cheating on you with your best friend. You still love them and really want to those memories gone. You got 2 options: 1) stop listening to favorite songs, no longer visit specific restaurants or pubs, st…

I wouldn't recommend letting your new partner know that you're doing that though.

yes would be a very bad idea :-/ there would probably be better examples (dealing with a breakup was in retrospect a terrible use-case to make my point).

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#56

Post by pjc50 »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #51
pjc50 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to raise a frame challenge: what if instead trauma was ubiquitous? It's not fatal and rarely debilitating. It does affect people's happiness and behaviour throughout their lives. It does not leave traces in the bones or DNA. How would we find an un-traumatized person in a world where injury, sickness and death were far more prevalent at all ages? Much traditional childrearing practice that's supposed to…

> " People would refuse to show PTSD symptoms under the threat of violence. " Doesn't the plight of homeless veterans today demonstrate that PTSD and mental illness is not something that can be easily hidden, even under threat of violence?

Homelessness is an effective way of hiding the symptoms at the cost of hiding the whole human from society. How many homeless lives are in the historical record? To the extent that they are referenced at all, they will appear as beggars in the background of some wider historical event.

You can beat symptoms out of someone if you don't care whether they survive the process. Then you have no people with visible symptoms around cluttering up the place.

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#57

Post by marcus_holmes »

pjc50 wrote: post #44
papeda wrote: post #3

On a related note, a while ago I read a little about how ancient families coped with the deaths of their children. My takeaway, pretty much cribbed from this article [1], was that such deaths produced less trauma than they would today because: (1) More families lost children. This lessened the trauma because a family could talk to other nearby families who had experienced the same thing. Those families would also be…

I would like to raise a frame challenge: what if instead trauma was ubiquitous? It's not fatal and rarely debilitating. It does affect people's happiness and behaviour throughout their lives. It does not leave traces in the bones or DNA. How would we find an un-traumatized person in a world where injury, sickness and death were far more prevalent at all ages? Much traditional childrearing practice that's supposed to…

WW1 was also different for the troops experiencing it because of the technologies involved.

There was a whole discussion here a few months back about how the WW1 battlefield (blasted trees, churned mud, etc) has shaped our expectations of what battlefields should look like. Before that, the battlefield itself was mostly untouched. Shell shock was a new phenomenon for soldiers from WW1 because it was a new experience for soldiers - artillery barrages just hadn't been that intense before.

Ancient hand-to-hand combat would have been horrific. Never mind trying to survive, just actively trying to hack someone else's body up with a sharp tool, when they're right there, would mess you up pretty bad. If, as TFA says, every able-bodied man in your entire society has experienced this, then every able-bodied man is going to be messed up.

But then, if every woman has gone through multiple stillbirths, child deaths, and so on, then everyone is going to be messed up. What they'd consider "normal" is what we'd consider as "struggling with deep trauma".

I think you're right - everyone would be traumatised by modern standards.

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#58

Post by RyJones »

yboris wrote: post #43

I wonder if PTSD is particularly likely when the terrible events occur spontaneously without obvious warning. Modern weaponry that allows one to die without an enemy visible probably exacerbates things. In the olden days you'd be charging towards the enemy for at least a while before you witnessed your comrades getting killed.

On Killing[0] covers some of this. The author argues that extended demob times in WW2 helped; supposedly, this is why people leaving Iraq and elsewhere end up "doing nothing in Kuwait" for weeks on end cleaning equipment.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Killing

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#59

Post by Spooky23 »

jeltz wrote: post #35
cletus wrote: post #12

If you're so inclined to go down a rabbit hole of 100+ hours of content, I highly suggest having a listen to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History [1]. Dan is particularly interested in military history, especially ancient military history. He has an episode on Caesar's conquest of Gaul (which he argues in any kind of modern context would be called a genocide) as well as a series on the great Persian kings, called the King o…

Your example of massacring the population of rebelling provinces can be found much closer to our time. Punishing rebels like that has been common throughout history. - 1750s Dzungar genocide - 1860s Circassian genocide - 1900s Herero and Namaqua genocide

- Various Mideast locales.

Re: Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

#60

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

sorokod wrote: post #53

I would suggest that some forms of medieval entertainment would cause PTSD in a modern person. From public executions, through bear baiting[1] and cat torture[2]. The (unstated) assumption the people in the past "were just like us" emotionally, deserves closer scrutiny. I believe that the magnitude of trauma inflicted by a certain experience is relative to what is considered to be the norm in the time and place. The…

Even butchering livestock for food, more or less a routine household chore in the past, is sufficiently alien today to most that it would likely cause PTSD if they had to do it.
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