Live data from Hacker News

Was there PTSD in the ancient or medieval world?

acoup.blog

91–100 of 215 posts

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

#91
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…

You don't have to go back far in time, 1918 my grandfathers on both sides lost entire families to the Spanish flu. And then some more in the wars. My granddad was a survivor, but he was scarred enough, that he exhibited some of the symptoms of PTSD. But, there was a collective loss and people thought in terms of a society. Do we have a social support structure left in this country?

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

#92
post #84

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 th…

Stupid question here, but isn't it possible that experiencing violence and death isn't as highly stressful/traumatic if it's to you like water is to a fish, to borrow your phrase? Especially if you have some sort of belief in an afterlife to console you. Just a question from someone who knows very little about this.

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

#93
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…

> To me, this is very similar to the suggested explanation in the featured article for why war used to cause less PTSD: there was less stigma around war, a much larger chunk of society fought in wars, and there were universal and well-defined rituals for processing the experience. I don't find the explanations in the article convincing and I think they omit just how much more horrific WWI was than anything that came…

Don't forget that WW1 was one of the first wide scale wars where it was common to be "blown up", and for some people, several times. Today we know that the actual act of being in a shockwave has long term real physical effects on the brain based on studies on soldiers blown up by IEDs. I wonder how much different that type of trauma is from trauma incurred by witnessing something.

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

#94
post #9
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…

You don't even need to go to the ancient world to see this. A rudimentary look at genealogy will show you that even in the 19th century. If a child under 2 dies, you'll often see reuse of that name for the next child. There were cultural standards, particularly in Europe, around naming children after paternal and maternal grandparents and so forth (such that often you can tell what number a child was by their name if…

My grandmother has nine children. Seven of those survived and two did not. This was very common in the area she lived then. To this day, however only in private moments, she talks about the two that did not make it. The loss of the two children many decades ago still brings her a lot of pain. She gave the name of one of the children that did not survive to a later child, however that never erased the suffering.

I think we should be more kind to our ancestors. Just because they lived in fucked up times, compared to our current standards, does not mean they experienced a different quality of suffering.

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

#95
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…

Your claims lack evidence. The article was all about surveying the available evidence for indications that PTSD was or was not a thing experienced by soldiers in the past at a rate similar to today. What is more, when he decides that the evidence does not support that, he suggests that the feelings experienced by soldiers have not changed, but that in ancient societies there were different mechanisms by which they were processed such that those same feelings did not produce what we call PTSD, at least not at the rate it does today.

Not only do you have no evidence or arguments (except vague claims to authority), but your claims do not even contradict the original article.

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

#96
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Stupid question here, but isn't it possible that experiencing violence and death isn't as highly stressful/traumatic if it's to you like water is to a fish, to borrow your phrase? Especially if you have some sort of belief in an afterlife to console you. Just a question from someone who knows very little about this.

It's not a stupid question at all.

Death nor violence does not have to be inherently traumatic. I would be very surprised if 100% of people back then had degrees of PTSD (and that's not what my comment was meant to imply).

A working definition of trauma: "trauma can be defined as any unresolved autonomic nervous system response. It’s about the nervous system’s response to an event, not necessarily the event itself. Events can affect each of us very differently."

The context in which these events happen plays a huge role in whether or not someone develops symptoms of PTSD afterwards.

Spiritual beliefs can play an important role in acceptance of death and therefore it not being a terrifying experience.

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

#97
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reproducibility crisis.

Please elaborate.

I unfold my interpreter spectacles It would appear that GP wishes to express skepticism of the concept of PTSD by invoking the “Reproducibility Crisis” that has affected the social sciences. It would seem that GP believes the crisis to be so all-encompassing and fully invalidating that merely speaking its true name is enough to dismiss any modern psychological finding.

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

#98
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ent…

Oh I love that reply. Thank you for that.

Great food for thought. You do in effect widen the topic so much, the very axioms underlying my assumptions, and that's extremely valuable to me. I think I see your point, now. you took me off-guard, I wasn't expecting this direction and failed to see what you meant.

I will yield to your logic (in particular the last sentence). I may deplore that it makes the whole topic kind of moot, but that's my feelings, not an argument whatsoever (my bias shows I suppose).

Now, I will just reaffirm that I'm parroting much more expert views. Such topics are one of my pet peeves, been thinking about it quite deeply since I was 12-ish (37 now). Lots of reading over the years. Lots of discussions with 'experts'. I've no professional qualification in psychology however, that's true.

All these questions, "did we cognitively think differently?", "did we feel differently?", "were we in any way significantly different that a modern psychologist couldn't do their thing on a Classic Roman?", "have we changed so much that someone from the past would be lost in the modern world if they were raised in it?"... they all met a resounding "no".

That's what I was trying to express. Based on this unanimous, quite consensual view, how could something as "simple" and common as PTSD not exist back then? It's a really extraordinary claim, thus the burden of proof falls on the claimant, I reckon.

Whether or not we are zombies (I think we are, to a much larger extent than we'd be comfortable admitting for now), that zombie today is exactly the same as all zombies prior, and yet to come, for a long, long time (year 10,000 is too soon, 50,000 might be a low threshold unless we dramatically sped up genetic mutations and selection).

I don't have much more to say. I could probably write a short novel, but what's the point. I'm not even defending the point, just stating consensus. It is, as you correctly imply, not my place to put forward or argue such ideas with authority. But you'll have to go against the whole field of psychology to counter it (I will be eating popcorn as you drag them to reason ;-) )

Hopefully, this tempers a possibly exaggerated authority I may have suggested in my OP. I'll blame my writing style now and learn my lesson, I'll be more cautious and reasonable next time.

(I also stand corrected about the downvoting, so that's on me, my bad. Much respect for your approach, then.)

Now, I'm off reading all these nice links. Thanks again (upvoted both your posts, for a solid contribution to discussion, regardless of my opinion).

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

#99
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…

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…

It seems to me that death in WW1 and later might be experienced as much more arbitrary. Instead of engaging in hand to hand combat with an enemy they can see, a shell just falls out of the sky and someone happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I suppose there could also be a sense in which, depending on the culture, a death in hand to hand combat might be viewed as glorious in a way that getting shot by a sniper or blown up by artillery wouldn't be.

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

#100
post #58
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

[deleted]
Post reply on HN