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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?

#81

Post by valuearb »

kryogen1c wrote: post #45
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…

> This rarity breeds isolation highly related: the opposite of addiction isnt sobriety, its connectedness. https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y... a large amount of resources are spent reimprinting the fact that people and emotional, irrational animals. ignoring this fact leads to its rediscovery and reexplanation in so many facets of our life: disaster planning and recovery, politics, economi…

Pop psychology.

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

#82

Post by mattigames »

sorokod wrote: post #77
mattigames wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can relate to not being traumatized with any of those practices but at the same time being easily traumatized from watching the dismembering of a close family member; that is to say that is not only the nature of the act that traumatize us but to whom is done.

The examples mentioned are entertainment . People would spend money to participate.

And I pay to see similar depictions in horror movies, I don't think either proves much about the damage from something traumatic happening to a family member or close friend.

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

#83

Post by lidHanteyk »

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…

It's true, we didn't have the same theory of other minds for those animals in those times. For a long time, bears in particular were so feared that their modern names actually come from ways to avoid referring to them directly [0]:

> This terminology for the animal originated as a taboo avoidance term: proto-Germanic tribes replaced their original word for bear—arkto—with this euphemistic expression out of fear that speaking the animal's true name might cause it to appear. According to author Ralph Keyes, this is the oldest known euphemism.

And it's well-known that housecats have been distrusted in various ways throughout the years [1], although not all societies have been abusive towards them. It is only very recently in our history that we have seen them not just as divine harbingers or adorable pets, but also as sapient intelligences with their own desires and goals. Indeed, it is only just now, in our lifetimes, that we have moved from a theory of us taming housecats to a theory of self-domestication [2].

What I'm getting at is that these folks in the past did not have the same empathy for animals that we do, and so they had not just different cultural values, but also different mental attitudes towards their (mis)treatment. When people say phrases like, "tigers are wild animals," or "dogs are unclean," they are not just indicating a cultural value but also how they personally empathize (or don't!) with different species.

None of this is to especially contradict your point. Their norms then were not our norms today. I merely would suggest that different norms lead to different abilities to empathize.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear#Etymology

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_cats

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-domestication

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

#84

Post by _wovb »

crazygringo wrote: post #50

Excellent counterpoint from r/AskHistorians (paragraph breaks added for legibility): [1] > Cross-cultural psychologists have observed that, regardless of cultural background, people who suffer persistent emotional disturbances in the wake of a traumatic event exhibit intrusive memory symptoms in some form. Here in the US, these are closely related to what we commonly call "flashbacks." For the Romans, people experien…

Thanks for this. I’m a trauma therapist, I work with many people who have PTSD. Reading this article all I could think was:

Trauma is a sophisticated concept. As a society and species, we are pretty “trauma naive” in that we have just recently come to this understanding of the very complex web of psychological, somatic, emotional, sociological, intergenerational, and cultural aspects of this experience. Because of this, we are refining the therapeutic modalities that are most efficacious for treating trauma. See all the latest literature by Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, Gabor Maté.

So I wouldn’t really expect these societies to know what to look for - in fact, it could have been so ubiquitous that the symptoms (and/or suppression of them e.g. regular intoxication) were normalized.

Given how warlike they were as he described in the article, it could be like asking a fish to describe water.

We know for a fact that mammals get PTSD after being in highly stressful experiences that they are unable to metabolize. I can’t see why humans would be any different.

Also, many different cultures have historically had taboos around the expression and natural resolution of PTSD. I don’t know about the culture of society around the age he is speaking of in this regard, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a normal aspect of life back then, too.

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

#85

Post by wetmore »

valuearb wrote: post #80
crazygringo wrote: post #50

Excellent counterpoint from r/AskHistorians (paragraph breaks added for legibility): [1] > Cross-cultural psychologists have observed that, regardless of cultural background, people who suffer persistent emotional disturbances in the wake of a traumatic event exhibit intrusive memory symptoms in some form. Here in the US, these are closely related to what we commonly call "flashbacks." For the Romans, people experien…

Reproducibility crisis.

Please elaborate.

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

#86

Post by valuearb »

drewbeck wrote: post #5

Really interesting, tho I wish he cited or talked to some psychologists as well! I wonder if the specific tools of war are a factor as well — the suddenness of explosions and bullets might provide a significantly more traumatic experience than spear sword and trebuchet, the pace of humvees and airplanes more shock than feet and horses.

Does a psychologist know the difference between the truth and what they make up?

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

#87

Post by valuearb »

third_I wrote: post #24

I'm sorry but this has to be the most un-scientific account I've read on the topic (granted, I read few), and it's incredibly misleading. - Humans did not change biologically enough in 10,000 years, let alone 2,000, to produce a meaningfully different psychology. Take a a child born 2,000 years ago, raise them today, and you'll get just a regular human being. Same thing backwards. - The entirety of the author's 'hypo…

Talking to psychologists suffers the reproducibility crisis.

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

#88

Post by baud147258 »

gherkinnn wrote: post #21
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…

This excellent blog series [0] goes in to a little more details on the Roman Conquest, in the specific context of many cultures glorifying the primitive other as being morally pure and more capable fighters. Genocide is the only word to use. I previously had no idea just how, erm, effective the Romans were. > historical events that could've completely changed the course of history The battle of Teutoburg Forest [1][2…

> [The battle of Teutoburg Forest] was used again and again to forge German identity

Interestingly, the defeat of Vercingetorix was also used as a mean of forging the French identity, so even a defeat can be used this way (though if Caesar had failed to invade Gaul, history might have been quite different too). Also in regard of using Teutoburg to build a national identity, the series on the Fremen Mirage [0] on the same blog talk about that idea too.

[0] https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

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

#89

Post by goto11 »

gdubs wrote: post #42

I always wondered if Achilles was struggling with PTSD during The Iliad . He had seen so much fighting and bloodshed that he became depressed and sat in his tent, refusing to budge. Maybe the anger at Paris was just a front.

He is "cured" from depression when his friend is killed, and he thrown himself back into battle. So it does sound more like sulking than PTSD.

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

#90

Post by _wovb »

Udik wrote: post #26
king_panic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grief is never wrong, only our relationships to grief. This is true of all emotions.

Hm. Think of how you normally try to comfort someone who is grieving about something that is not (in your opinion, at least) of paramount importance. For example, the loss of a sum of money. Would you rather say: "your loss is terrible and only you can understand fully how deep the pain is; savour it and integrate it in your person- it will take years to recover and will eventually become a part of you" or would you…

Clinical experience and research indicates that validation of the person’s felt experience is usually going to lead to more efficacious resolution of their symptoms. I.e.:

“That sounds really hard! I’m sorry to hear that.”

Then, just wait! don’t say anything else (yet...). Just BE with the person in however they respond. You don’t need to solve their experience by offering any of the rest — those statements can work later, and it’s important to follow the organicity of their process and not go too quickly.

When we are given space, permission, and a safe witness to our feelings, this is one way to facilitate the resolution of trauma — our bodies know how to do this, naturally.

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