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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?

#41

Post by third_I »

mkl wrote: post #39
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…

> The entirety of the author's 'hypothesis' (sic) rests upon ignoring that nurture, context, is highly determinant in forming psychological references, relative perceptions, hence reactions, profiles. Huh? The author's hypothesis is that nurture and context were all-important in helping people avoid PTSD.

And I claim, or rather parrot, that it's wrong to think that because words were not spoken or did not exist, the thing they would eventually come to designate ("PTSD") did not exist.

Romantic love is another good example. It never was spoken in modern terms before the 16th century give or take. Which is far from being equivalent to say "nope, they didn't speak of it like that, so people never experienced romantic love before the 16th century!"

The author's view is just as flawed, afaik. PTSD and every other psychological trait known in modern times did exist for much longer than recorded history, that's what most historical psychologists have concluded (it's not open to debate...), just in different terms (words), perceptions, value (in a larger hierarchy).

Edit: think of it this way. Were feelings "important" in the past? Certainly nowhere near as much as they are today, in our perception. Most were not even spoken, there simply were no words most of the time (or unknown to layman people). Did feelings exist forever, however? Absolutely, yes.

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

#43

Post by yboris »

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.

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

#44

Post by pjc50 »

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 be "character building" (e.g. corporal punishment; Roald Dahl's description of the process is worth reading) looks instead like a form of trauma inoculation. Get the trauma over with early. Bully anyone who shows signs of being negatively affected by the trauma. People would refuse to show PTSD symptoms under the threat of violence.

WW1 was in some ways unique in that the West had experienced a long period of peace. There were colonial occupations and thousands of troops dying overseas, mostly of disease, but not in Europe itself.

Edit: see also the comment upthread about "being haunted"; the pre-modern world was what Carl Sagan called the "demon haunted world". If you look at a some religious and spiritual practices as trauma-processing, a connection emerges. Parts of the 60s spiritual revival and Jungianism were trying to do this explicitly.

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

#45

Post by kryogen1c »

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, economics, drug addiction, social media, you name it.

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

#47

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

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…

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

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

#48

Post by ncarroll »

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…

This happened to Salvador Dali. His older brother, Salvador died a few months before he was born. I once (a long time ago, sorry I don't have a link) saw a documentary that claimed his fascination with counterfeit art had to do with his feeling like a copy of his brother.

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

#49

Post by take_a_breath »

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…

==more families lost children==

Today, 15-20% of all pregnancies are lost to miscarriage. Not so rare. I wonder how many of those parents would have even known they were pregnant prior to modern medicine.

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

#50

Post by crazygringo »

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 experiencing intrusive memories were said to be haunted by ghosts. These individuals show up in historical, philosophical, and even medical texts.

> Josephus, who was an outsider to Roman culture, also describes this phenomenon in his history of The Great Revolt. Those haunted by ghosts are constantly depicted showing many symptoms which would be familiar to the modern PTSD sufferer. Insomnia, depression, mood swings, being easily startled, frequent eye movement, alertness all day and night, paranoia, avoidance of crowds, suicidal thoughts/attempts, loss of appetite, shaking/shivering, self-hatred, and impulsive violence have all turned up in association with these individuals.

> Since in almost every case the person experiencing these things had made himself an object of public shame, the "ghosts" in question often came in the form of those he had killed or wronged in the past. These would either appear spontaneously to the sufferer, or would come in the form of vivid, frightening nightmares.

> The key component to these experiences, as with modern cases of PTSD, was that the sufferer had no control over his own symptoms. Thoughts or vivid memories would occur unexpectedly and uncontrollably. It is easy to see why the Romans, who were religiously superstitious to begin with, would attribute such things to the foul play of malicious spirits.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j6ssm/are_t...

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