What about the multiple secretive meetings between Trump and Putin over the last few years? They certainly weren't a projection of my supposed trauma. — Evil

The argument isn't that Trump is alright really, it's that nearly half of Americans are so fucked up that they think he might be, and most of the rest are so fucked up they think he is literally destroying everything.

Now, something seems half-complete about these idea, but this is what comes up immediately. If I were't trying to bracket the idea, I'd probably try to polish it and make it seem stronger than it is, as a sheer argument. But I'm presenting it here as it arises. — csalisbury

I think I roughly understand, and I think you are potentially right. Shall I compare therapy to a Turing Test? It is more lovely. The more you specify what will happen in a Turing Test, and what will decide it, the easier it is for a programmer to design an appropriate response. It is in the uniqueness of the encounter that the test occurs. And the same goes, I think for therapy. The reality and therefore the trustworthiness (and completeness) of the relationship is only established by the unique responses to the individual in each case, and everything that is theoretical and exemplary is mere mechanics. Here, we are reading the score, not playing the music. I wonder, does something like this idea enter every encounter, or is it a particular psychobabble alarm? Certainly, there is little prospect online of ever escaping the tyranny of the endless string, and that is both its safety and its futility.

If you see a recording of therapy going well, you see something indescribable - which I will now describe. There is a moment in what seems a normal dull conversation when something, a word, a gesture, a long silence, connects and penetrates; you can see someone change, something awaken, something release. the technical term for this is "Juju".

What this thread needs is more psychobabble.

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/07/gabor-mate-russiagate-interview-transcript/

Has that been your professional experience? — Wallows

My professional experience is that this is the best vacuum cleaner. It has a friendly smile and a long wire.

I speak without authority, the best understanding I have, and I am talking about anyone who has suffered childhood trauma that has damaged their development in terms of self-esteem. People do want quick and easy solutions, and they are not available. If you read the section on the stages of recovery, you will see many examples of people wanting, and needing the therapist to be a miracle worker. That too must be negotiated.

More like self-acceptance and self-love — Wallows

Well yes, I'm trying to say that they amount to the same thing.

Everyone begins helpless and dependent. So if those you depend on are not dependable, you have to accept what their actions declare, that you are not worth caring for. And once you have accepted that, anyone who seems to care for you must be either playing a trick on you or just stupid. Either way, you cannot trust them.

The alliance of therapy cannot be taken for granted; it must be painstakingly built by the effort of both patient and therapist. Therapy requires a collaborative working relationship in which both partners act on the basis of their implicit confidence in the value and efficacy of persuasion rather than coercion, ideas rather force, mutuality rather than authoritarian control. These are precisely the beliefs that have been shattered by the traumatic experience. Trauma damages the patient’s ability to enter into a trusting relationship; it also has an indirect but powerful impact on the therapist. As a result, both patient and therapist will have predictable difficulties coming to a working alliance. These difficulties must be understood and anticipated from the outset. — Herman

In one successful case both patient and therapist came to understand the terror at the source of the patient’s demand for rescue: “The therapist remarked, ‘It’s frightening to need someone so much and not be able to control them.’ The patient was moved and continued this thought: ‘It’s frightening because you can kill me with what you say . . . or by not caring or [by] leaving.’ The therapist then added, ‘We can see why you need me to be perfect.’”
When the therapist fails to live up to these idealized expectations—as she inevitably will fail—the patient is often overcome with fury. Because the patient feels as though her life depends upon her rescuer, she cannot afford to be tolerant; there is no room for human error.

After gradually disclosing his involvement in a pedophilic sex ring, Paul suddenly announced that he had fabricated the entire story. He threatened to quit therapy immediately unless the therapist professed to believe that he had been lying all along. Up until this moment, of course, he had wanted the therapist to believe he was telling the truth. The therapist admitted that she was puzzled by this turn of events. She added: “I wasn’t there when you were a child, so I can’t pretend to know what happened. I do know that it is important to understand your story fully, and we don’t understand it yet. I think we should keep an open mind until we do.” Paul grudgingly accepted this premise. In the course of the next year of therapy, it became clear that his recantation was a last- ditch attempt to maintain his loyalty to his abusers.

What I am seeing here is how a science based theory becomes an artful, creative, unique and individual relationship. Perhaps other passages resonate with you more, but this last case, Paul, shows the delicacy required to negotiate the maintenance of the patient's autonomy and "not reinforce unhealthy habits of thought/belief."

Christ you know it ain't easy.

. it takes another who can be trusted and will not reinforce unhealthy habits of thought/belief. — creativesoul

Absolutely!

In terms of childhood trauma, we are dealing with a dysfunctional primary relationship.

This (with the last post) is distressing to me, because I don't know how you progress from there. It seems like a double bind. — csalisbury

Right. How can you trust anyone, when you cannot trust your own trust? This is exactly the devastating global stress that results from an uncaring, or unreliable carer. It goes to the extreme that being abused feels like a place of safety, and a caring relationship is untrustworthy, because the abuse is always anticipated.

"The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor." But this is also, I'd say, the last principle. Look for someone who with open eyes will say that they trust your trust and your lack of trust. Someone who will help you fix yourself when you are ready. You are bound to be distrustful, you ought and need to be distrustful; It is no random madness. So the first step, if you will, is to trust your distrust. And that means not settling for the first person with a gift for psychobabble you come across.

Well whatever gets you through the night. But that's more or less what Herman said about resilience - maintaining a social scene through difficulties, taking an active but collaborative stance... and maybe those 3 years were crucial.

I find that difficult to believe. — Amity

Perhaps I am naive and innocent. I assumed most people here would be scoring 0 or 1. The first surprise to me was that folks could not seem to imagine bringing up children without any punishment. I knew there were one or two people with 'diagnoses', but apart from them...

Anyway, I don't consider you at all an outsider, and your concerns are totally legitimate. There is a delicate line to tread on the one hand between honesty and self-indulgence, and on the other between friendly interest and voyerism, or 'therapism'. I do try to curb my enthusiasm a bit, but my interest is strong, and I think the reason for that is that although I score 0 in family relations, my school experiences were rather less than idyllic, so I have something to reconcile for myself, not just a concern for others.

There is just too much personal information being given out by the vulnerable.
I liken it to voyeurism. — Amity

Yes, I wasn't expecting it to go this way at all. But I don't think it has got dangerously personal. One brings one's outlook to philosophy anyway, and hopefully we are something like unruly siblings that fight and squabble but have an underlying loyalty to each other. And of course you can always call on big brother if you think anyone is getting hurt. There is another thread that was extremely confessional that I had to back away from... But feel free anyway to change the tone to something a bit more formal and theoretical.

We don't all have an equal platform in these places either. Those with more money, fame, charm or even just dumb luck have a platform that others don't. Again, how is adding 'political correctness' to that list any more arbitrary? — Isaac

One of the things that gives one a platform is being controversial, aka political incorrectness. My feeling is that academic platforms should be reserved for academic type talk. By which I mean measured, careful, dispassionate, balanced, tight, and that means not talking loosely about a Soros Empire, or bandying 'vile' and 'disgusting' about without a very careful supporting argument. Journalism in newspapers, political rhetoric on soapboxes, complete bollocks on facebook, and in universities -smart people talking carefully and clearly.

What has the study yielded that's of any good use to people who have been subjected to those sorts of lifestyles growing up(or those who've yet to have been but will be one day)? — creativesoul

Filling in a questionnaire, reading a book, even joining in a thread is unlikely to have a huge benefit to a person in distress. But a better theory of mind might lead to better treatments, less stigma, all sorts of improvements. I would guess if you scored nine but have no symptoms of trauma, you are probably unusual. There is talk in the wiki, and in the book of "resilience".

stress-resistant individuals appear to be those with high sociability, a thoughtful and active coping style, and a strong perception of their ability to control their destiny. For example, when a large group of children were followed from birth until adulthood, roughly one child in ten showed an unusual capacity to withstand an adverse early environment. These children were characterized by an alert, active temperament, unusual sociability and skill in communicating with others, and a strong sense of being able to affect their own destiny, which psychologists call “internal locus of control.” Similar capacities have been found in people who show particular resistance to illness or hardiness in the face of ordinary life stresses.
During stressful events, highly resilient people are able to make use of any opportunity for purposeful action in concert with others, while ordinary people are more easily paralyzed or isolated by terror. The capacity to preserve social connection and active coping strategies, even in the face of extremity, seems to protect people to some degree against the later development of post-traumatic syndromes. For example, among survivors of a disaster at sea, the men who had managed to escape by cooperating with others showed relatively little evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder afterward. By contrast, those who had “frozen” and dissociated tended to become more symptomatic later. Highly symptomatic as well were the “Rambos,” men who had plunged into impulsive, isolated action and had not affiliated with others. — Herman

I wonder if this has any resonance with you? What has been said here about feeling loved is also important I'm sure, was there some sustaining relationship in what must have been some difficult times for you?

This cannot be a therapy session, but I'll just point out that 'establishing safety' is the first requirement for recovery from trauma, as set out by Judith Herman in the book linked above (Have a look, it's not too hard to read). So it is important if you are to make any changes, to ask yourself seriously what you need, to feel, well not total security, but secure enough to take the next step in a relationship, whether therapeutic, romantic, or just friendly.

Thus google:

Addiction is manifested in any behavior that a person craves, finds temporary relief or pleasure in but suffers negative consequences as a result of, and yet has difficulty giving up. In brief: craving, relief, pleasure, suffering, impaired control.
Opioids and Universal Experience of Addiction by Dr. Gabor Maté.

So if you find yourself skipping meals and staying up all night to make posts here, you are addicted to TPF.

I honestly question if anyone ever thinks they are loved. — TogetherTurtle

That's a very sad confession; I'm very sorry for you. Unfortunately, such insecurity has a tendency to become self-fulfilling, because the only way to test someone's love is to be unpleasant to them, and eventually, because no one's love is infinite, you will reach their limit, and prove yourself right again.

Theme tune for this thread is a nice uplifting one - 'Let me your enemy, but overall let me be your friend...'

I really commend this book, although I have only skimmed it as yet. There are resonances with other discussions here on political correctness as well as psychobabble threads you may wot of.

To study psychological trauma is to come face to face both with human vulnerability in the natural world and with the capacity for evil in human nature. To study psychological trauma means bearing witness to horrible events. When the events are natural disasters or “acts of God,” those who bear witness sympathize readily with the victim. But when the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides.
It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil.

https://whatnow727.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/herman_trauma-and-recovery.pdf

Here's her actual book instead.

The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not cure. Many benevolent and well-intentioned attempts to
assist the survivor founder because this fundamental principle of empowerment is not
observed. No intervention that takes power away from the survivor can possibly foster
her recovery, no matter how much it appears to be in her immediate best interest. In the
words of an incest survivor, “Good therapists were those who really validated my
experience and helped me to control my behavior rather than trying to control me.” — Judeth Herman

I'd like if possible to move on to a consideration of possible therapies, and I am just exploring myself at this point, but reference to Judith Herman on wiki led me to this:
http://trauma-recovery.ca/recovery/phases-of-trauma-recovery/

And when I've had a look, I might post something about this 3 stage conception of recovery, and how well it meshes with other ideas that are around.

Edit. It's decidedly gooey, if not flakey, and some of you will have to hold your noses a bit at the 'spiritual' talk. It's bit too alternative even for my jaded palate. Nevertheless, there is something of an overview of some more scientific thinking, and plenty of well meant and probably harmless at worst advice. Take what you need and leave the rest. I'm looking for something a bit more ... rigorous.

We know that war experiences can be psychologically traumatic to adults. It used to be called 'shell-shock', and these days 'PTSD'. Not everyone, but significant numbers suffer. And it is undoubtedly true for children when the war comes to them - let alone when they go to war as child soldiers. We know, for example, that one who has been deployed where there are snipers, can find themselves years afterwards, leaping involuntarily for cover when a curtain across the road twitches. We know there are cases of hysterical blindness or paralysis.

The childhood Trauma model suggests that there are two particular circumstances that further influence the significance for children of adverse circumstances. The first is that the relatively unformed state and thus extra plasticity of the child brain allows a deeper and stronger effect. The second is that the necessary dependence of the child and the requirement to form bonds of affection with carers makes adverse experiences of or from those carers set up a contradiction in the psyche. Again, it is known in adults as Stockholm syndrome, but is assumed to be more strong in children and is sometimes exploited by abusers through 'grooming.'

"The problem faced by many patients is that they did not grow up in a reasonably healthy, normal family. They grew up in an inconsistent, abusive and traumatic family. The very people to whom the child had to attach for survival were also abuse perpetrators and hurt him or her badly.... The basic conflict, the deepest pain, and the deepest source of symptoms, is the fact that mom and dad's behavior hurts, did not fit together, and did not make sense." — Colin Ross

I gave a lot of references: this from one on the trauma model.

Arieti stated in Interpretation of Schizophrenia that a trauma is more significant when committed by people to whom young human beings are emotionally bonded, and abuse is often interwoven with other forms of neglect and confusing behaviours from care-givers:

“ First of all we have to repeat here what we already mentioned..., that conditions of obvious external danger, as in the case of wars, disasters, or other adversities that affect the collectivity, do not produce the type of anxiety that hurts the inner self and do not themselves favor schizophrenia. Even extreme poverty, physical illness, or personal tragedies do not necessarily lead to schizophrenia unless they have psychological ramifications that hurt the sense of self. Even homes broken by death, divorce or desertion may be less destructive than homes where both parents are alive, live together, and always undermine the child's conception of himself.[18] ”

The Trauma model is inference from the data. If you want to question the data, you're going to have to do the work yourself, but if you want to question the model, you need another explanation of the data. And to dismiss the data without due cause is something I am happy to dismiss myself.

I think the difference between the people in the gutter and the ones who become successful is interesting. Surely chance has something to do with it, but what else? The severity of the abuse might. For instance, maybe a 7 on the scale has a better chance at success than a 9. — TogetherTurtle

Alice Miller was particularly interested in celebrities, and she suggested that they are driven by the need for attention, and can never get enough to reassure themselves that they are loved. Gabor Mate talks about addiction, not only to drugs, but to money, status, power, and incidentally, they are interested in much more subtle forms of abuse than are caught by the questionnaire. But let me put it this way, being abused by Jimmy Savile s not 'sweet'.

I do have some of my own issues with the test though. surely being raped by a parent and suffering through a divorce 17 should not equally be a 'one'. Admittedly tangential to the op's point tho. — csalisbury

They could just ask one question, 'how happy was your childhood 0 - 10.' These questions turn out to be more predictive. But they are only trying to measure one thing, andthewse are the questions that succeed in dividing people the best statistically. Whether they are consistent or even meaningful is secondary. They might have found it statistically significant to ask if you liked squishing worms as a child. It's like when the doctor asks where it hurts, it is meaningful to him whether you point with a finger, a fist or a flat hand in terms of how localised. Litmus paper, not a ph meter.

In a bit, I want to have a look at possible therapies in the light of the general importance of childhood experience, that seems incontrovertible in all these varied problems, both mental and physical. I think it's more interesting than worrying about the questionnaire.

I need a bit more than a word. This is just a wild guess, but if you are thinking along the lines that 'mental illness' is an attempt to maintain one's psychological stability in a dangerous unstable mad world, then I think that is probably something like, A childhood coping adjustment thatbecomes a hopeless maladjustment to a normal world.

I see, so then that produces a skewed distribution of who needs what. — Wallows

Not really. There are obviously factors that are not accounted for in a short questionnaire. there are obviously degrees of 'often' and beating and sexual touching that are not accounted for. It does what it does, and not everything.

A 2005 meta-analysis of schizophrenia revealed that the prevalence of physical and sexual abuse in the histories of people diagnosed with psychotic disorders is very high and has been understudied. This literature review revealed prevalence rates of childhood sexual abuse in studies of people diagnosed with schizophrenia ranging from 45% to 65%.[2] An analysis of the American National Comorbidity Study revealed that people who have endured three kinds of abuse (e.g., sexual, physical, bullying) are at an 18-fold higher risk of psychosis, whereas those experiencing five types are 193 times more likely to become psychotic. — wiki

This is the sort of thing that is interesting, not on an individual level, but on a theoretical level. These are not causes, but clearly they are important. Probably some people are genetically more susceptible to this or that. schizophrenia, or depression, or obesity, or... and some are highly resistant to them.

But for you, if you have a score of 3 and you have symptoms x, y, z, that are known to be associated with adverse childhood experiences as measured by this rough and ready guide, then there is an extremely good bet that your symptoms are related to your childhood experiences. And that might in turn suggest some therapeutic relation that involves looking in that direction, and that would then include whatever else was a stressor, including neglect.

Why is that unenlightened-san? — Wallows

Mrs un scored 3, and she was almost annoyed not to get more. She asked the same question. And the answer is that this is not a therapy, or even a diagnostic tool, but a research tool. They want robust, rather than precise, and neglect is not the sort of matter of fact physicality you can give an easy yes or no to. So if you say to your doctor that you score 3 on this scale, he will look for stress illnesses, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, eating disorder, depression, addictions, etc etc. You might not have any of these, but you are at higher risk.

It's not that neglect isn't a factor, at least at some extreme, it's just down and dirty convenience not to go into it for these purposes - we're not trying to actually measure your suffering. When it's therapy time, and we get to details, then of course it is important.

Interestingly, when we look at Mrs un's wider family of aunts uncles and cousins, there are many more factors that are related to this list; alcoholism, suicide, physical violence, that are not on her list. As though one sibling took to drink, another to violence a third to depression, and each next generation family had its own list of woes as a result.

and yet this is apparently acceptable treatment in modern society. It's a fucking disgrace. — Isaac

If you do it to an adult it's called psychological torture, and it's a crime against humanity.

I was on maybe one or two occasions though. Not a big deal. — I like sushi

Does that amount to a bolded 'often'?

Yes, I don't know why. I assume it is not a mistake though, and that the wording picks up something better than a more neutral locution.

Are you saying you never felt a threat of being slapped? — I like sushi

Yes. That's what I'm saying. It is very sad that that is at all hard to believe.

So, are unsightly ivory towers a bug or a feature of a healthy discoursal landscape? — Baden

I think ivory towers are great adjuncts to any monastery. But if you use them as grandiose soapboxes, you deserve all the rotten tomatoes you get. Scruton and Paglia are not academics, they're wannabe celebrities. Nobody dragged them into the limelight, and if they weren't there, we wouldn't be discussing them.

We had a little break, and now we've had some local council elections.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/03/tories-lose-over-1200-seats-in-local-elections-as-major-parties-suffer

So following an election in which both major parties lost, and parties representing remain made large gains, the two major parties are showing us how democracy works by trying to stitch up a brexit deal in order to avoid the humiliation of EU elections.

I don't think I'll be the only one to see that as a betrayal of all principle except self-serving fear of the electorate. Anything at all to avoid an election you will lose, even a compromise you have refused for 3 years.

How it's supposed to work, this democracy thing, is that people stand for ideas and policies they believe in, and try and convince the electorate to agree with them. But what has been happening is that people have been finding out what the electorate want to hear and telling them they stand for that.

And of course what the electorate want is an impossible magic world where everything is free and somebody else does all the work.

Or whatever martyred heretic we'd like to talk about. — fdrake

I wasn't expecting to be the Spanish Inquisition. I know you academics are sensitive little souls and all that, but out here in the rough tough world, customers make complaints and nobody has a job for life.

Under capitalism, education is a commodity, and is democratised by consumerism - the customer is always right. So professors have to win popularity contests just like the rest of us. And in particular, academics that deliberately put themselves in the public eye by publishing controversial political pieces in the mainstream media need to toughen up and stop whining about witch hunts when they meet some opposition and become somewhat unpopular. Folks that want unquestioned tenure should stay in their ivory towers and and only talk to other tenured academics. i never complain about the ones I never hear about. Government advisers deserve the blame for everything, don't they?

There are forums that are closed. Members only places that do not allow the riff riff to join, but I am part of the riff riff, so unfortunately I cannot induct you into their ranks.

There might even be a hidden forum here that no one sees until they are invited into it. Oh, but there cannot be, because you would already know about it.

Who are the bullied again ? — Amity

While we're completely changing the subject, I would strongly suggest that these are not separate species, the bully and the victim, more of a circle of life. I should say that I cannot vouchsafe that subtitles in the following bear any relation to the words spoken, which could be cake recipes for all I know. I wonder, these days, if there is any depth at all at which one stops saying 'legitimate' 'out of context' and has to admit that something rather nasty is going on.

Anyway, I reckon obscenity and disgust are crucial in any comprehensive discussion of sexuality, so I don't see any problem with that language. — jamalrob

Indeed. We might, for example, want to distinguish one's partner's clitoris from one's mother's, in terms of disgust and/or obscenity. That is to say as a relational matter not an absolute one. This this the discussion that is pre-empted by Scrotum, because his personal feelings are presented as the absolute arbiter of some universal property of things that applies to every right-thinking Englishman.

So your point is that you're offended because a philosopher has negatively judged your sexual practice? And I'm pathetic? — jamalrob

Not you, your practice dodge.

See?

No, that's not my point. My point is that my language is proportional to Scrotum's language, and it makes no sense, to condemn mine and excuse his, on some notion that behaviour, views, and people are separable.

It is rather like his defence of a remark that I can't be bothered to reference again, that "homosexuality is abnormal" as 'factual'. He knows that 'abnormal has a dual sense of 'uncommon' and 'deviant'( in the condemnatory sense). And I know because my special subject at ninnyversity was "Abnormal Psychology" that the common meaning in academia (and the rest of the world) is not the neutral factual one; I wasn't studying unusually smart people or unusually empathic people, but various kinds of insanity. He pretends to a neutrality but in fact he condemns homosexuality, and depends on the equivocal language to avoid the condemnation he deserves in return.

And again it is not one solitary phrase, or one solitary dubious association, but there are many just on this thread that add up to an intemperate and frankly arrogant and hate-filled attitude to otherness of every kind.

it's not any person's views or words but a general sexual practice. — jamalrob

It's my fucking practice, so he's condemning me. Really that is a completely pathetic dodge on your part.

consigning a view to somewhere beyond reasonable debate (the place you aim to put someone when you call them sexist, fascist, malevolent, etc.) — jamalrob

Again, I see you condemning my language as trying to put something beyond reasonable debate as if calling something an obscene disgusting practice is the language that keeps things within reasonable debate. Most of my complaint about Scrotum is exactly your complaint about me, that his language itself prevents a reasoned discussion and certainly doesn't amount to one. And he's the philosophy professor, who ought to know better.

But this is an issue for debate, not for shutting people down. — jamalrob

Are you suggesting - you seem to be suggesting - that I have made any kind of argument that any such issue should not be debated, or that anyone should be shut down? If you show me, I will retract and apologise. I have intimated that a person who espouses such views with such intemperate language should not be in a position of academic authority over young people, given also various other questionable views and activities already mentioned. But that is not shutting down the debate, merely refusing to recognise the authority of such expressions as if they had the institutional weight of established consensus when they are asserted without argument or support.