Trauma Therapy Run Amok

It’s the latest thing in therapy-- trauma. Apparently, two thinkers, by name of Gabriel Mate and Bessel van der Kolk have persuaded America that childhood traumas are the root cause for everything that is going wrong in everyone's present life.

Mate, you may know, did not just write a best selling book. He appeared on television with Prince Harry, a man who strikes one as being sorely in need of help. At the least, Harry did not receive very much of it from Gabriel Mate.

As for Bessel van der Kolk, the Boston University professor has written a mega best seller explaining that infantile trauma is the cause of everything that is going wrong in your life.

In short, blaming it all on trauma has become highly fashionable in the therapy world. And Sally Satel writes very well on the Bari Weiss blog to debunk it all. She remarks that many people who have suffered traumas are not miserable or dysfunctional. And she adds that many people who are miserable and dysfunctional had normal childhood experiences.

Satel explains:

Over my decades of work as a psychiatrist, I have seen many patients continuing to nurse the wounds of childhood. Still, many others with unremarkable childhoods develop problems for reasons that have little to do with a troubled upbringing, such as feelings of failure, the inability to find love, or strong genetic predispositions that lead to mental illness later in life.

And she adds:

But I also worry about luring people down the psychological path of least resistance. After all, the trauma narrative provides several comforts: a tidy origin story; a self-justifying narrative for those ashamed of their behavior; and the balm of exoneration that comes with victimhood.

It may be no coincidence that two of the most popular mental health figures in America today—Bessel van der Kolk and Maté—focus on trauma.

First, they sound good. I am impressed by their sincerity and empathy; they express genuine optimism that their audiences can attain emotional growth.

And Satel continues:

The claims from both van der Kolk and Maté that ancient trauma can surface in the body years later cannot be disproved, which makes their claims unscientific.

Think about it: most of us have had at least one bad, even awful, early experience. And most of us also suffer with some kind of ongoing physical or mental ailment. Anyone who wants to connect the dots can easily do so and call it a causal chain of events. Like the palm reader who sees heartbreak in your past—my God, she’s right!—adverse events will always be there, ready to be mined for a future diagnosis of “trauma.”

It feels more and more like snake oil, like a cure-all that is being offered up to comfort the afflicted-- or to afflict the comfortable.

I will confess to not having read either of the books in question. And yet, I was intrigued by Satel’s summary of the van der Kolk thesis:

However, his theory that traumatic memories are routinely banished from consciousness and are instead manifest solely in the body, the core claim of his blockbuster book, has been seriously challenged.

Let us put aside the serious challenges for the moment. I think it worth mentioning that this theory corresponds perfectly with Freud’s first theory about what used to be called conversion hysteria. 

In the late nineteenth century young women were suffering from physiological conditions that apparently had no physiological causes. Thus, psychiatrists at the time, and even neurologists like Freud, decided that the problem was in their minds. 

Freud, in particular, wrote his first book, Studies in Hysteria, to explain how he had cured many of these patients by helping them to recover forgotten and repressed memories. 

Of course, everyone ought to know by now that Freud changed his mind about this theory, because it did not work. It did not cure patients, but served to promote Freud’s reputation as something of a healer.

At the least, we should understand that the notion that repressed traumas take up residence in the body is an old and discredited theory. Happily, Satel does not take it seriously. 

More importantly, for our purposes, and as we have occasionally noted on this blog, the most interesting contemporary work on trauma resolution involves something that psychologists and psychiatrists call resilience. It means that most people recover from trauma without any therapeutic intervention.

This fact alone makes the musings of Mate and van der Kolk less than persuasive.

Satel explains the new resilience theory:

In his 2021 book, The End of Trauma: How the New Science of Resilience Is Changing How We Think About PTSD, Bonanno summarizes years of epidemiological research showing that most people who’ve experienced potentially traumatic events are not crippled by the experience later in life. 

Indeed, a large body of research confirms that resilience is the human default response to trauma. Bonanno says most patients have a “flexibility” mindset, giving them optimism and confidence in their ability to cope. According to his findings, patients usually take a “challenge orientation” in their approach to past trauma—believing they can overcome the challenge rather than be defeated by it.

It gets worse for those who are selling trauma:

But this intense focus on trauma, according to Bonanno, can also lead to a dangerous search for trauma—a phenomenon that has already led to several modern-day scandals. In the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, for example, children “recovered” false memories of animal torture, Satanic cults, and being penetrated with objects after being questioned by authorities in a highly suggestible manner. In 1994, a father successfully sued two Orange County therapists for implanting memories of abuse in his child. And in 2011, a jury in Madison, Wisconsin, awarded a couple $1 million against therapists who falsely suggested to their daughter that the father had raped her, the mother had tried to drown her, and the family was part of a cult that engaged in infanticide.

Without a doubt, early events shape us. For some, the impact can be devastating. But experts who see the trauma response at the root of almost every problem risk deluding people looking for self-knowledge.

Seek, and ye shall find. Bonano makes an important point here. If you have been persuaded that all of your problems derive from a repressed trauma you are going to find a repressed trauma hidden away in your memory bank, regardless. 

And we would add, without having anything resembling expertise in this area, that memories vanish from our neurons, because they are overwritten by later experiences. Thus, if you cannot recall something that happened during your infancy, the reason is that the memory is no longer accessible. It has been written over and effectively erased. And no, it is not making itself known through those twitches in your eyes or your numbed arm.