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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?

#101

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

cletus wrote: post #9
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…

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…

> If a child under 2 dies, you'll often see reuse of that name for the next child.

This is apparently the backstory as to why the musician Richard D James called himself "Aphex Twin"

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

#102

Post by gdubs »

goto11 wrote: post #89
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.

He kinda goes into a blind rage though, which could still fit. Further complicating things — they drink wine relentlessly throughout.

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

#103

Post by RookyNumbas »

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…

I'm not sure that is actually a counterpoint. It think they are somewhat in agreement. The blog states that there is very little evidence that people of the ancient and medieval world experienced PTSD from combat the way modern soldiers do.

The askshistorians poster focuses on two points:

- Combat and violence were normalized, and there was little moral or ethical ambiguity surrounding it. Unlike today.

- PTSD seemed to come from public perception of the acts and the resulting shame, rather than the acts themselves. Also unlike today.

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

#104

Post by eeZah7Ux »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #14
cletus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> that's actually a pretty effective way for overwriting/replacing your bad memories

Please avoid this oversimplification of human psyche.

We are not fruit flies, we are thousands of times more complex than "replacing your bad memories"

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

#105

Post by sharkweek »

_wovb wrote: post #96
Cederfjard wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. E…

My (limited, so please correct me if I’m saying something dumb) understanding here too is some people are just wired different and can handle more traumatic situations than others.

My therapist had me read a book called The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr. Elaine Aron after I told him I was struggling with things I felt a “normal” person should be able to handle just fine. The book made a lot of interesting points about what it means to be sensitive (broad sense of the word) to the world around us.

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

#106

Post by third_I »

agarden wrote: post #95
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…

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 we…

EDIT: please do read crazygringo's thread above, people in there have much more substance that I could in my short/quick write-up above. In particular, palimpsests' view is very close to what I've heard again and again from people with relevant experience.

___

Did I make a fool of myself by failing to comprehend what I read and then arguing exactly the same?

Then, I will just shut up and read again.

___

Somehow, a bit tangential to the topic:

About evidence or argument, appeal to authority, I do think it's a case of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof", and the author's claim is extraordinary. Mine is really just consensus from the field of historical psychology. I've never heard an expert arguing otherwise. I could probably google a few links, but randomly sticking "proof" on a non-problem seems... pointless. I shouldn't have to prove that flat geometry yields 180° triangle, it's whoever claims otherwise that bears the burden of substantiating it.

I just won't spend that particular time, since the author's claim is weird, not mine. Triangles add up to 180. Human biology and psychology did not change in recorded history. There's nothing 'new' in our heads besides what we intake from the context.

___

But I hear you and will re-read that piece later, with a colder head. Maybe I was put off by some emotional bias and got 'triggered' by the claim (no PTSD in the past... huh?), which led me to interpret, thus fail to comprehend what I read. That much is 100% possible and I've no ego problem in admitting that.

Apologies to the author if that's been the case.

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

#107

Post by _wovb »

sharkweek wrote: post #105
_wovb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. E…

My (limited, so please correct me if I’m saying something dumb) understanding here too is some people are just wired different and can handle more traumatic situations than others. My therapist had me read a book called The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr. Elaine Aron after I told him I was struggling with things I felt a “normal” person should be able to handle just fine. The book made a lot of interesting points abou…

This is definitely correct! Everybody is equipped differently to cope with life. The environments we grow up in make a huge difference in this. And they vary tremendously.

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

#108

Post by marcus_holmes »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #78
marcus_holmes wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What they'd consider "normal" is what we'd consider as "struggling with deep trauma". I think you're right - everyone would be traumatized by modern standards. I suspect that some of the harmful behaviors (we associate with PTSD) weren't socially abhorrent, in past eras. eg: Societies generally condone some amount of mistreating other people. That particular outlet could have been fully acceptable, when done to mar…

totally agree. Beating your wife as a method of controlling your PTSD was socially acceptable then. Now, not so much.

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

#109

Post by stared »

Animals do feel PTSD, see https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2012.0002... (an evolutionary advantage, to avoid things that an organism barely survived). There are rat models, in which there are similarities up to particular neurobiological changes. Anecdotally, quite a few friends who took a dog from a shelter, and it had PTSD (likely due to maltreatment by the previous owners, or abandonment) triggered by certain actions (leaving along, shouting, raising one's hand, the smell of alcohol, etc).

In this context, the presumption that humans a few hundreds, or thousands, years ago didn't experience PTSD is... strange.

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

#110

Post by marcus_holmes »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #70
marcus_holmes wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also concussive blast damage was far, far more common from WW1 than in any previous war. The Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) caused by blast damage isn't externally visible, but is responsible for some of the common symptoms of PTSD[1]. We know there are forms of PTSD unrelated to blast-based TBI, but it's quite possible that pre-WWI soliders didn't experience PTSD as much because there weren't as many explosions. Combi…

I'm always dubious about this. "Decimation" was a horrific thing, inflicted on Roman Legions as punishment for cowardice. It meant killing one out of every ten soldiers. So it seems to me that that's the extreme upper bound of casualties - 10%. Anything more and running away to face decimation would improve your odds.

But the survivors might well have trauma from their actions not their injuries. Hacking another human to death is traumatic for normal people. The survivors would also have survivor guilt.

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