6 ms·

Hard to See: How trauma became synonymous with authenticity

79 points by acsillag 5y ago

jgerrish 5y ago
We need some more "complicated" and "complex" characters. We need more "underdogs". It's not a bottom up thing necessarily, although individuals have no choice in that game-theory scenario if they want to succeed. It was a top-level design decision. Sorry.
kayodelycaon 5y ago
> Trauma has become reduced to a trope And here in lies the problem. Trauma and reactions to it have always existed. Perhaps in the past, people had communities to lean on and help them cope. Or they just drank themselves to death. (Always a popular option.) Mental illness has also existed for a very long time. Schizophrenia isn’t a new disease. It’s just a new, better understood label. The science behind psychology is still very new in the long view of history. And as with all science, people have run away with it. In recent history, radiation was seen as healthy and Radium was a fad. Eventually we learned what Radium was and stopped that nonsense. Our understanding of trauma will change too. We’re still in the discovery phase of this science. Mental health is no longer a taboo topic. And people are running away with it, for one reason or another. Personally, I welcome the change, but it’s going to be a rough few decades before this settles down. If someone can use something for attention, they will.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  This is ahistorical. Psychology has fixated on trauma as the source of neurosis since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Breuer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Breuer and Anna O., and the body of work behind it is almost entirely pseudoscience. > Schizophrenia isn’t a new disease. It’s just a new, better understood label. Really? That's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Bleuler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Bleuler, a contemporary of Breuer and Freud. It's not new, refers to a vague cluster of symptoms rather than a specific disease, and it's not in any way understood. IMO, what's happened is that everybody became an amateur psychologist, effectively medicalizing gossip. You can't just say that you don't like someone anymore, or that they're an asshole, you have to diagnose them. Ironically, if they wear that diagnosis around as a badge of honor, you're not allowed to notice it or consider it in any decisionmaking involving that person, lest you become an abuser. Disguising gossip as commentary or insight is the addiction. edit: and the seminal contribution to the victims' communities that politics has now become a battle between was made by big pharma financing patients' groups for specific diseases and using them as lobbying organizations to put pressure on the FDA and insurance companies.
  - flatline 5y ago
    I think in the context of the parent post, 1800s is recent. There’s a different between someone having narcissistic traits and being diagnosed with NPD, but we casually say both of them are narcissists. Everyone has some of those traits, they just don’t run their lives. All language is fundamentally shorthand for real or imagined phenomena, and can be both descriptive and misleading. Clusters of personality traits can be enlightening even in the context of gossip!
    - kayodelycaon 5y ago
      1800s would be recent in the scales I’m talking about.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - CoolBreezeTM 5y ago
    > It's not new, refers to a vague cluster of symptoms rather than a specific disease, and it's not in any way understood. As I understand it, this is is an exaggeration. There have been numerous genes that have been found to be associated with Schizophrenic patients (although no single genetic cause exists). There are preventative prenatal trials ongoing. While science may not have a cure, we have inklings of a cause. If you'd like a pop-culture book, I'd recommend you read Hidden Valley Road.
tfigueroa 5y ago
This explains feelings I’ve had watching Euphoria. I’ve noticed a worsening physiological response just watching the show, so haven’t finished season 2. Initially I felt there was some catharsis to get out of it, but I’ve had to stop myself and ask what the effects really are. More cortisol? Less shock from real trauma? I’m not sure. Yet I was drawn in by the trauma, and the thought - formed somewhere in my mind - that these dark, traumatic things were more authentic, and so there was something real and authentic to get out of watching it. But so far, there isn’t much of a thesis, or something, to really think about and learn from. So I’m done for now. edit: formatting
- odessacubbage 5y ago
  so much of modern tv just feels like misery porn.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    Along these lines, modern dramatic TV makes me incredibly anxious. I shouldn’t need to take medication to watch a TV show.
  - goatlover 5y ago
    There's a third and fourth spinoff of The Walking Dead coming out if that's your thing.
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    That's why I stopped watching it entirely, and so can you. My hypothesis as to why most TV is misery porn goes beyond just that people can relate to misery. I think it's the combination of misery and violence, whether it's physical or verbal. The modern world is so tightly controlled that the average person knows that they can't commit much if any violence in real life, for any reason, good or bad, without either facing penalties or extreme misunderstandings. Sure, there's mentally unstable individuals who attack every now and then, but the law can't do anything about them and we just shrug and think "that's just what they do," more or less. Secretly, or subconsciously, part of many everyday people wants to be the character who puts people in their place, or stabs people, or cooks meth, or shoots people, or beats the ever living shit out of people, and so on. Even if they have a moral compass of some kind, and don't even have the balls to do any of that, they've got some brain cells that gets excited from seeing people do things they know they could never even think of doing. Even if it's not physical violence, people clearly like the fake or instigated drama on reality and cooking shows. They've all wanted to say "fuck you" to their boss at some point, but only by living vicariously through fiction can they picture it happening. Of course, these nefarious characters in media must be miserable somehow, or the world around them had to make them who they are in some way, else the illusion can't work.
sparker72678 5y ago
I think there is an aspect to the recent fixation on trauma that is a response to the tightly curated personas that many present online. Not everyone can/wants to display that "successful" appearance, and some choose to flip the script and emphasize their suffering, which it turns out can garner just as much attention.
livinginfear 5y ago
Maybe this relates to how the west seems to consider the highest form of self-actualization to be triumph over adversity. It makes up the core narrative structures of western literature. It defines the core story arc show on television. I wasn't at all surprised all those years ago when Lana Del Ray affected this faux veneer of 'prom queen goes melancholy'. It's existed forever, it's just broken mainstream now.
- extra88 5y ago
  > the west seems to consider the highest form of self-actualization to be triumph over adversity. What’s an example of a culture that doesn’t lionize triumph over adversity?
- kizer 5y ago
  Personally I'd like to see more of the triumphing and less of the "shock appeal" adversity in much modern media.
taurath 5y ago
My internal narrative is that newer generations are working to keep their emotional well being alive - to access human empathy and build up the idea of emotional boundaries in response to a world which pretends they shouldn’t exist - especially with older generations who were encouraged to shut it off and not talk about anything, or to feel free to express just about any emotion at any time regardless of whether it’s abusive or gaslighting. Not to mention that reprocessing trauma is much, much more effective than giving someone a pill who presents with depression. To me while it’s still very messy, it’s so much simpler and more free to live among people who are respectful of emotional boundaries - you begin to trust people to say something if there’s a problem, and so you have freedom to explore and experiment and take risks. The opposite where you’re free to do whatever by disregarding everyone else is functionally railroading people, dehumanizing them in the name of the power of the individual.
kochikame 5y ago
This is all over LinkedIn these days as well. Every other post is a close up of someone bawling their eyes out with the post something like "This was when I hit rock bottom", or maybe it's "Ten years ago I was a self-harming junkie who tried to kill myself multiple times, but now I'm the founder of a successful recruiting agency...", or "Here is a picture of my dead child who was taken from last year by cancer" etc. It's like, if you don't have trauma, or more correctly a visible badge of trauma, you can't be taken seriously. Personally, I find it a bit showy and basically a form of "virtue signalling" (for want of a better word), but each to their own I guess. I would keep that stuff to myself.
kizer 5y ago
Sometimes I get the feeling that those who aren't "suffering" are now condemned as "privileged", completing negating the essence of humanism and liberalism; it's a crime to be _seen_ as living a happy life (while we all know that every person has had their own personal struggles and anyways it's none of our business).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jancsika 5y ago
> In her essay Regarding the Pain of Others, on images of violence and suffering, Susan Sontag famously asks: “What is the point of exhibiting these pictures? To awaken indignation? To make us feel ‘bad,’ that is, to appall and sadden? To help us mourn? … Do they actually teach us anything?” I'll take a stab at it: 1. The point is basic education, let's call it "social literacy." 2. Not necessarily, though in some cases it obviously does. 3. Sadness is sometimes a consequence of the process of gaining social literacy-- same as when people cry while gaining literacy through reading novels, no? 4. Sometimes, but of course mourning is only one small category in the process of learning about the world around you. 5. Well, for one thing-- off the top of my head-- this knowledge essentially inoculates one against some of the worst types of religious demagoguery. E.g., "god's plan" is seriously questioned by some of the worst types of human-induced horrors, and reasonably rejected upon discovery of the worst natural horrors. See Dostoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov" (can't remember the chapter). Reasonable religious people may disagree, but the point is zealous demagoguery doesn't function well in light of such knowledge.[1] 1: Though it's no panacea: e.g., nihilism is an easy option in such conversations.
dgreensp 5y ago
Trauma is the consequences of abuse and ongoing lack of safety, in the body. It’s always been around. I think the use of public spaces to discuss, integrate, and heal people’s personal trauma is relatively new in our culture? Something like that. The rules of social interaction are changing. Being “witnessed” by one’s community or group, or someone, is part of shaking off trauma, but who? What counts as one’s community these days (online)? When do we hold space for whose trauma? There are some good questions there. Bo Burnham is all about fake authenticity. That was actually a great example, as much as I like his stuff. And “trauma porn” whose only purpose is to titillate is of course not of moral value. But telling people’s stories and sharing our experiences has value.

79 points by acsillag 5y ago

We need some more "complicated" and "complex" characters. We need more "underdogs". It's not a bottom up thing necessarily, although individuals have no choice in that game-theory scenario if they want to succeed. It was a top-level design decision. Sorry.

kayodelycaon 5y ago

> Trauma has become reduced to a trope And here in lies the problem. Trauma and reactions to it have always existed. Perhaps in the past, people had communities to lean on and help them cope. Or they just drank themselves to death. (Always a popular option.) Mental illness has also existed for a very long time. Schizophrenia isn’t a new disease. It’s just a new, better understood label. The science behind psychology is still very new in the long view of history. And as with all science, people have run away with it. In recent history, radiation was seen as healthy and Radium was a fad. Eventually we learned what Radium was and stopped that nonsense. Our understanding of trauma will change too. We’re still in the discovery phase of this science. Mental health is no longer a taboo topic. And people are running away with it, for one reason or another. Personally, I welcome the change, but it’s going to be a rough few decades before this settles down. If someone can use something for attention, they will.

pessimizer 5y ago
This is ahistorical. Psychology has fixated on trauma as the source of neurosis since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Breuer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Breuer and Anna O., and the body of work behind it is almost entirely pseudoscience. > Schizophrenia isn’t a new disease. It’s just a new, better understood label. Really? That's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Bleuler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Bleuler, a contemporary of Breuer and Freud. It's not new, refers to a vague cluster of symptoms rather than a specific disease, and it's not in any way understood. IMO, what's happened is that everybody became an amateur psychologist, effectively medicalizing gossip. You can't just say that you don't like someone anymore, or that they're an asshole, you have to diagnose them. Ironically, if they wear that diagnosis around as a badge of honor, you're not allowed to notice it or consider it in any decisionmaking involving that person, lest you become an abuser. Disguising gossip as commentary or insight is the addiction. edit: and the seminal contribution to the victims' communities that politics has now become a battle between was made by big pharma financing patients' groups for specific diseases and using them as lobbying organizations to put pressure on the FDA and insurance companies.
- flatline 5y ago
  I think in the context of the parent post, 1800s is recent. There’s a different between someone having narcissistic traits and being diagnosed with NPD, but we casually say both of them are narcissists. Everyone has some of those traits, they just don’t run their lives. All language is fundamentally shorthand for real or imagined phenomena, and can be both descriptive and misleading. Clusters of personality traits can be enlightening even in the context of gossip!
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    1800s would be recent in the scales I’m talking about.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- CoolBreezeTM 5y ago
  > It's not new, refers to a vague cluster of symptoms rather than a specific disease, and it's not in any way understood. As I understand it, this is is an exaggeration. There have been numerous genes that have been found to be associated with Schizophrenic patients (although no single genetic cause exists). There are preventative prenatal trials ongoing. While science may not have a cure, we have inklings of a cause. If you'd like a pop-culture book, I'd recommend you read Hidden Valley Road.

tfigueroa 5y ago

This explains feelings I’ve had watching Euphoria. I’ve noticed a worsening physiological response just watching the show, so haven’t finished season 2. Initially I felt there was some catharsis to get out of it, but I’ve had to stop myself and ask what the effects really are. More cortisol? Less shock from real trauma? I’m not sure. Yet I was drawn in by the trauma, and the thought - formed somewhere in my mind - that these dark, traumatic things were more authentic, and so there was something real and authentic to get out of watching it. But so far, there isn’t much of a thesis, or something, to really think about and learn from. So I’m done for now. edit: formatting

odessacubbage 5y ago
so much of modern tv just feels like misery porn.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  Along these lines, modern dramatic TV makes me incredibly anxious. I shouldn’t need to take medication to watch a TV show.
- goatlover 5y ago
  There's a third and fourth spinoff of The Walking Dead coming out if that's your thing.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  That's why I stopped watching it entirely, and so can you. My hypothesis as to why most TV is misery porn goes beyond just that people can relate to misery. I think it's the combination of misery and violence, whether it's physical or verbal. The modern world is so tightly controlled that the average person knows that they can't commit much if any violence in real life, for any reason, good or bad, without either facing penalties or extreme misunderstandings. Sure, there's mentally unstable individuals who attack every now and then, but the law can't do anything about them and we just shrug and think "that's just what they do," more or less. Secretly, or subconsciously, part of many everyday people wants to be the character who puts people in their place, or stabs people, or cooks meth, or shoots people, or beats the ever living shit out of people, and so on. Even if they have a moral compass of some kind, and don't even have the balls to do any of that, they've got some brain cells that gets excited from seeing people do things they know they could never even think of doing. Even if it's not physical violence, people clearly like the fake or instigated drama on reality and cooking shows. They've all wanted to say "fuck you" to their boss at some point, but only by living vicariously through fiction can they picture it happening. Of course, these nefarious characters in media must be miserable somehow, or the world around them had to make them who they are in some way, else the illusion can't work.

sparker72678 5y ago

I think there is an aspect to the recent fixation on trauma that is a response to the tightly curated personas that many present online. Not everyone can/wants to display that "successful" appearance, and some choose to flip the script and emphasize their suffering, which it turns out can garner just as much attention.

livinginfear 5y ago

Maybe this relates to how the west seems to consider the highest form of self-actualization to be triumph over adversity. It makes up the core narrative structures of western literature. It defines the core story arc show on television. I wasn't at all surprised all those years ago when Lana Del Ray affected this faux veneer of 'prom queen goes melancholy'. It's existed forever, it's just broken mainstream now.

extra88 5y ago
> the west seems to consider the highest form of self-actualization to be triumph over adversity. What’s an example of a culture that doesn’t lionize triumph over adversity?
kizer 5y ago
Personally I'd like to see more of the triumphing and less of the "shock appeal" adversity in much modern media.

taurath 5y ago

My internal narrative is that newer generations are working to keep their emotional well being alive - to access human empathy and build up the idea of emotional boundaries in response to a world which pretends they shouldn’t exist - especially with older generations who were encouraged to shut it off and not talk about anything, or to feel free to express just about any emotion at any time regardless of whether it’s abusive or gaslighting. Not to mention that reprocessing trauma is much, much more effective than giving someone a pill who presents with depression. To me while it’s still very messy, it’s so much simpler and more free to live among people who are respectful of emotional boundaries - you begin to trust people to say something if there’s a problem, and so you have freedom to explore and experiment and take risks. The opposite where you’re free to do whatever by disregarding everyone else is functionally railroading people, dehumanizing them in the name of the power of the individual.

kochikame 5y ago

This is all over LinkedIn these days as well. Every other post is a close up of someone bawling their eyes out with the post something like "This was when I hit rock bottom", or maybe it's "Ten years ago I was a self-harming junkie who tried to kill myself multiple times, but now I'm the founder of a successful recruiting agency...", or "Here is a picture of my dead child who was taken from last year by cancer" etc. It's like, if you don't have trauma, or more correctly a visible badge of trauma, you can't be taken seriously. Personally, I find it a bit showy and basically a form of "virtue signalling" (for want of a better word), but each to their own I guess. I would keep that stuff to myself.

kizer 5y ago

Sometimes I get the feeling that those who aren't "suffering" are now condemned as "privileged", completing negating the essence of humanism and liberalism; it's a crime to be _seen_ as living a happy life (while we all know that every person has had their own personal struggles and anyways it's none of our business).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jancsika 5y ago

> In her essay Regarding the Pain of Others, on images of violence and suffering, Susan Sontag famously asks: “What is the point of exhibiting these pictures? To awaken indignation? To make us feel ‘bad,’ that is, to appall and sadden? To help us mourn? … Do they actually teach us anything?” I'll take a stab at it: 1. The point is basic education, let's call it "social literacy." 2. Not necessarily, though in some cases it obviously does. 3. Sadness is sometimes a consequence of the process of gaining social literacy-- same as when people cry while gaining literacy through reading novels, no? 4. Sometimes, but of course mourning is only one small category in the process of learning about the world around you. 5. Well, for one thing-- off the top of my head-- this knowledge essentially inoculates one against some of the worst types of religious demagoguery. E.g., "god's plan" is seriously questioned by some of the worst types of human-induced horrors, and reasonably rejected upon discovery of the worst natural horrors. See Dostoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov" (can't remember the chapter). Reasonable religious people may disagree, but the point is zealous demagoguery doesn't function well in light of such knowledge.[1] 1: Though it's no panacea: e.g., nihilism is an easy option in such conversations.

dgreensp 5y ago

Trauma is the consequences of abuse and ongoing lack of safety, in the body. It’s always been around. I think the use of public spaces to discuss, integrate, and heal people’s personal trauma is relatively new in our culture? Something like that. The rules of social interaction are changing. Being “witnessed” by one’s community or group, or someone, is part of shaking off trauma, but who? What counts as one’s community these days (online)? When do we hold space for whose trauma? There are some good questions there. Bo Burnham is all about fake authenticity. That was actually a great example, as much as I like his stuff. And “trauma porn” whose only purpose is to titillate is of course not of moral value. But telling people’s stories and sharing our experiences has value.