The Case Against the Trauma Plot
December 27, 2021 11:28 AM Subscribe
The prevalence of the trauma plot cannot come as a surprise at a time when the notion of trauma has proved all-engulfing. Its customary clinical incarnation, P.T.S.D., is the fourth most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in America, and one with a vast remit. Defined by the DSM-III, in 1980, as an event “outside the range of usual human experience,” trauma now encompasses “anything the body perceives as too much, too fast, or too soon,” the psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem tells us in “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies” (2017). The expanded definition has allowed many more people to receive care but has also stretched the concept so far that some 636,120 possible symptom combinations can be attributed to P.T.S.D., meaning that 636,120 people could conceivably have a unique set of symptoms and the same diagnosis.
After watching Hannah Gadsby's first Netflix special, now whenever I see the word trauma I can't help but hear it in her accent: "trawwwwmuh."
posted by PhineasGage at 12:31 PM on December 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by PhineasGage at 12:31 PM on December 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
I confess, I'm a little weirded out at the article contention that trauma is a way to try to make characters seem artificially special or more deep, or that a lens of trauma reduces us to the things we've suffered in the past rather than allowing us to understand our present.
It's worth pointing out that trauma is so everyday and common that no one noticed it as something to study until WWI's absolute epidemic of shellshock, which importantly was a) simple with an obvious cause, and b) created intense enough lingering symptoms which were common enough that the phenomenon could not be misunderstood as an effect of class or moral weakness or individual failure. Over the history of the way PTSD specifically and trauma generally have been interpreted, it's worth noting that groups that have experienced trauma have needed to engage in very specific activist pushes to get mainstream psyciatric care to acknowledge that particular experiences we categorize as likely to create trauma today are, yes, traumatic. There was massive cultural resistance, for example, to the idea that rape was traumatic--trauma was only for soldiers, and then only for victims of the really awful kinds of rape, and then maybe for other things as well. Those other things get included in the definition only after groups of people have to explicitly say: these dismissed experiences in my life create and cause problems for me. They injure me. We need to stop injuring one another.
In general I think the author might benefit from understanding a very specific point: stress is not trauma. Trauma sometimes happens after stressful experiences, but not always, and not necessarily as a function of the duration or severity of the stress itself. Rather, it seems that the most powerful predictive factor of whether post-stress trauma sets in after a stressful experience is the social support that a person receives afterwards. Of course you would then see a resurgence of trauma in the wake of Vietnam versus more popular wars; of course it would plague rape victims more than victims of muggings: these are experiences for which people who have survived stressful encounters have often been judged by society to be responsible for their own experience. The article muddies this point badly at several points, however, and seems to use "trauma" and "stress" interchangeably as they argue that our current approach to trauma is too vague and overblown.
Often, too, when I see people trying to grapple with trauma through stories, I see people creating characters who struggle with a familiar experience of trauma caused by a relatively dramatic, exhausting event that no reader could argue isn't "enough" to create the traumatized experience that the writer is trying to explore. I think writers do this to be able to explore the traumatized experience without invoking exactly the social judgement that creates trauma from stress in the audience, honestly.
posted by sciatrix at 12:38 PM on December 27, 2021 [72 favorites]
It's worth pointing out that trauma is so everyday and common that no one noticed it as something to study until WWI's absolute epidemic of shellshock, which importantly was a) simple with an obvious cause, and b) created intense enough lingering symptoms which were common enough that the phenomenon could not be misunderstood as an effect of class or moral weakness or individual failure. Over the history of the way PTSD specifically and trauma generally have been interpreted, it's worth noting that groups that have experienced trauma have needed to engage in very specific activist pushes to get mainstream psyciatric care to acknowledge that particular experiences we categorize as likely to create trauma today are, yes, traumatic. There was massive cultural resistance, for example, to the idea that rape was traumatic--trauma was only for soldiers, and then only for victims of the really awful kinds of rape, and then maybe for other things as well. Those other things get included in the definition only after groups of people have to explicitly say: these dismissed experiences in my life create and cause problems for me. They injure me. We need to stop injuring one another.
In general I think the author might benefit from understanding a very specific point: stress is not trauma. Trauma sometimes happens after stressful experiences, but not always, and not necessarily as a function of the duration or severity of the stress itself. Rather, it seems that the most powerful predictive factor of whether post-stress trauma sets in after a stressful experience is the social support that a person receives afterwards. Of course you would then see a resurgence of trauma in the wake of Vietnam versus more popular wars; of course it would plague rape victims more than victims of muggings: these are experiences for which people who have survived stressful encounters have often been judged by society to be responsible for their own experience. The article muddies this point badly at several points, however, and seems to use "trauma" and "stress" interchangeably as they argue that our current approach to trauma is too vague and overblown.
Often, too, when I see people trying to grapple with trauma through stories, I see people creating characters who struggle with a familiar experience of trauma caused by a relatively dramatic, exhausting event that no reader could argue isn't "enough" to create the traumatized experience that the writer is trying to explore. I think writers do this to be able to explore the traumatized experience without invoking exactly the social judgement that creates trauma from stress in the audience, honestly.
posted by sciatrix at 12:38 PM on December 27, 2021 [72 favorites]
636,120 possible symptom combinations
and my traumas (sibling with spina bifida, death of parent in childhood) aren't even on the list for complex PTSD from childhood
posted by thelonius at 1:08 PM on December 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
and my traumas (sibling with spina bifida, death of parent in childhood) aren't even on the list for complex PTSD from childhood
posted by thelonius at 1:08 PM on December 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
There's been a back and forth in Fanfare about the current season of Star Trek: Discovery and its focus on its characters navigating trauma and PTSD. Some folks (myself strongly) are glad to see a Star Trek series taking the time to actually treat the trauma its characters experience seriously, and make it into a story. Others are... less enthusiastic. But this is the age of trauma, and people coming to terms with it. If it's not Star Trek's job to examine that in some form, what is the job of Star Trek? Or, for that matter, any other serious work of art that wants to comment on the world as it is now?
I've been reading The Body Keeps The Score and it's been pretty eye-opening, getting a deeper clinical insight into trauma and its treatment both as a general concept, and as it relates to me and the people I love. A lot of the examples in the book are, by nature, particularly extreme cases of trauma and PTSD: severe childhood abuse, Vietnam and WWII veterans, and so on and so forth. It makes sense to use these dramatic examples in a book that endeavors to explain the subject of trauma and PTSD to a lay audience, but it can also perpetuates a very strong stereotype that "real" trauma is a result of extremes of war or childhood abuse. As long as that image of what trauma is and what causes PTSD is tied to extremes, a lot of people who need help aren't going to think they're deserving of it.
The last two years—if not longer—have been a fairly continuous source of trauma for people by any definition of the term. If the pandemic hasn't caused trauma, it's probably exacerbating pre-existing traumas that haven't been resolved. I know in my case, it's the latter, and I've been doing some pretty heavy therapy to deal with it. I don't understand why it's a bad thing that we've expanded the definition of trauma. If someone has happened to you, sticks with you, and continues to negatively affect your life, anything that makes it easier for you to get the help and treatment you need is a net positive, isn't it?
Suffering isn't noble, and it doesn't make you stronger. If it takes expanding the concept of trauma and its symptoms to help people stop suffering, so be it.
posted by SansPoint at 1:29 PM on December 27, 2021 [26 favorites]
I've been reading The Body Keeps The Score and it's been pretty eye-opening, getting a deeper clinical insight into trauma and its treatment both as a general concept, and as it relates to me and the people I love. A lot of the examples in the book are, by nature, particularly extreme cases of trauma and PTSD: severe childhood abuse, Vietnam and WWII veterans, and so on and so forth. It makes sense to use these dramatic examples in a book that endeavors to explain the subject of trauma and PTSD to a lay audience, but it can also perpetuates a very strong stereotype that "real" trauma is a result of extremes of war or childhood abuse. As long as that image of what trauma is and what causes PTSD is tied to extremes, a lot of people who need help aren't going to think they're deserving of it.
The last two years—if not longer—have been a fairly continuous source of trauma for people by any definition of the term. If the pandemic hasn't caused trauma, it's probably exacerbating pre-existing traumas that haven't been resolved. I know in my case, it's the latter, and I've been doing some pretty heavy therapy to deal with it. I don't understand why it's a bad thing that we've expanded the definition of trauma. If someone has happened to you, sticks with you, and continues to negatively affect your life, anything that makes it easier for you to get the help and treatment you need is a net positive, isn't it?
Suffering isn't noble, and it doesn't make you stronger. If it takes expanding the concept of trauma and its symptoms to help people stop suffering, so be it.
posted by SansPoint at 1:29 PM on December 27, 2021 [26 favorites]
I might not be the intended audience for this piece; I find I disagree with the author about quite a lot of things, but then I also am a pretty surface reader and viewer: I don't do a lot of critical thinking about what I read or watch. I do, however, disagree with her about Ted Lasso ("The second-season revelation of Ted Lasso’s childhood trauma only reduces him" - I disagree) and Sula Peace ("Sula doesn’t exist for our approval or judgment, and, in her self-possession, is instead rewarded with something better: our rapt fascination with her style, her silences and refusals." - I don't contemplate any of the characters I've met in fiction recently to exist for my approval or judgement, and I don't actually find Sula any more compelling for the lack of pointing to a specific trauma that made her the way she is).
Indeed, I disagree with Sehgal's conclusion: "The trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority." In my experience, with what I've read and seen in recent years, the inclusion of trauma in a character's life does not reduce that character's journey, nor does it insist upon moral authority - other than saying "this is a piece of information that matters to this story."
The essay leaves me with the feeling that Sehgal would just rather not know about the traumas in these characters' lives. That's her right, to have a preference; but many kinds of trauma leave the traumatized with an overwhelming sense of not being worth protecting, not being heard, and not being believed (they overlap, but are different things). In many of the works I've read recently, simply being able to acknowledge the harm of what happened to the character, and then the further extraordinary event of being heard and believed by other characters, is fundamental to the story. And it's no wonder those stories resonate with so many readers and viewers; there are an awful lot of people who hunger to be heard, to be believed, to even be able to admit to themselves that something hurt them in a deeply lasting way.
The CDC tells us that at least 1 in 7 children have experienced child abuse and/or neglect in the past year (emphasis mine). Research in the last few decades examining the impact of childhood trauma on physical health has provided a much clearer picture of how horrific traumas in children's lives (abuse, exposure to domestic violence, losing siblings or parents to violence) can cause diagnosable disruptions to the nervous system, the cardiovascular system, the immune system, the endocrine system. That 1998 study found that 67% of participants had at least one Adverse Childhood Experience, and 13% had four or more.
That's a lot of trauma. And that's just what we've chosen to study, just recently.
With trauma so incredibly widespread in the populace, it's unsurprising that it would find its way into works of fiction, and unsurprising that those works would find a wide audience. (Ted Lasso remains extremely popular.)
I'm sorry Sehgal doesn't find works that include past trauma very satisfying, but I'm glad there are plenty of writers creating all kinds of works, including stories of people who have suffered something life-changing and - fictional though they be - get to tell their stories.
posted by kristi at 1:34 PM on December 27, 2021 [23 favorites]
Indeed, I disagree with Sehgal's conclusion: "The trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority." In my experience, with what I've read and seen in recent years, the inclusion of trauma in a character's life does not reduce that character's journey, nor does it insist upon moral authority - other than saying "this is a piece of information that matters to this story."
The essay leaves me with the feeling that Sehgal would just rather not know about the traumas in these characters' lives. That's her right, to have a preference; but many kinds of trauma leave the traumatized with an overwhelming sense of not being worth protecting, not being heard, and not being believed (they overlap, but are different things). In many of the works I've read recently, simply being able to acknowledge the harm of what happened to the character, and then the further extraordinary event of being heard and believed by other characters, is fundamental to the story. And it's no wonder those stories resonate with so many readers and viewers; there are an awful lot of people who hunger to be heard, to be believed, to even be able to admit to themselves that something hurt them in a deeply lasting way.
The CDC tells us that at least 1 in 7 children have experienced child abuse and/or neglect in the past year (emphasis mine). Research in the last few decades examining the impact of childhood trauma on physical health has provided a much clearer picture of how horrific traumas in children's lives (abuse, exposure to domestic violence, losing siblings or parents to violence) can cause diagnosable disruptions to the nervous system, the cardiovascular system, the immune system, the endocrine system. That 1998 study found that 67% of participants had at least one Adverse Childhood Experience, and 13% had four or more.
That's a lot of trauma. And that's just what we've chosen to study, just recently.
With trauma so incredibly widespread in the populace, it's unsurprising that it would find its way into works of fiction, and unsurprising that those works would find a wide audience. (Ted Lasso remains extremely popular.)
I'm sorry Sehgal doesn't find works that include past trauma very satisfying, but I'm glad there are plenty of writers creating all kinds of works, including stories of people who have suffered something life-changing and - fictional though they be - get to tell their stories.
posted by kristi at 1:34 PM on December 27, 2021 [23 favorites]
Gosh, wait until the author calculates the symptom combinations for MS, or lupus, or sickle cell.
posted by away for regrooving at 1:43 PM on December 27, 2021 [21 favorites]
posted by away for regrooving at 1:43 PM on December 27, 2021 [21 favorites]
I think this essay sort of works as an indictment of a very particular dramatization of trauma ("the trauma plot") that appears in lit fic, film, and television. Absolutely, many of our popular narratives about trauma tell a single story and lack nuance.
For all that, sometimes even bad fiction is cathartic. Besides, there are so many other kinds of trauma narratives out there, from contemporary genre fiction to the 19th-century novels that Sehgal seems determined to misread. A few examples are mentioned near the end of the essay (Maus, Reservoir Dogs), but I can think of enough examples to make me question whether the trauma plot is the bugbear the author is claiming.
At the risk of being catty, this was one of those literary essays that left me thinking, "Gosh, sorry you haven't read some better books."
posted by toastedcheese at 1:58 PM on December 27, 2021 [19 favorites]
For all that, sometimes even bad fiction is cathartic. Besides, there are so many other kinds of trauma narratives out there, from contemporary genre fiction to the 19th-century novels that Sehgal seems determined to misread. A few examples are mentioned near the end of the essay (Maus, Reservoir Dogs), but I can think of enough examples to make me question whether the trauma plot is the bugbear the author is claiming.
At the risk of being catty, this was one of those literary essays that left me thinking, "Gosh, sorry you haven't read some better books."
posted by toastedcheese at 1:58 PM on December 27, 2021 [19 favorites]
I agree with SansPoint that
Absolutely yes, using Buddhism or other spiritual practices to cultivate a serene sense of denial about significant life trauma (spiritual bypassing) is ultimately harmful to oneself and others. But the reverse - "medicalizing" and defining as "trauma" so much of what is all-too-human unhappinesses - is similarly misguided. I fear it does flatten our society's efforts to find the best different approaches to ameliorating the full range of different negative experiences.
posted by PhineasGage at 2:09 PM on December 27, 2021 [13 favorites]
Suffering isn't noble, and it doesn't make you stronger.But I disagree with the increasing modern use - in literature and elsewhere - of suffering and trauma as synonyms, and I disagree that
If it takes expanding the concept of trauma and its symptoms to help people stop suffering, so be it.It wasn't just the Buddha who taught that unsatisfactoriness and suffering are inevitable parts of the human condition.
Absolutely yes, using Buddhism or other spiritual practices to cultivate a serene sense of denial about significant life trauma (spiritual bypassing) is ultimately harmful to oneself and others. But the reverse - "medicalizing" and defining as "trauma" so much of what is all-too-human unhappinesses - is similarly misguided. I fear it does flatten our society's efforts to find the best different approaches to ameliorating the full range of different negative experiences.
posted by PhineasGage at 2:09 PM on December 27, 2021 [13 favorites]
At the risk of being catty, this was one of those literary essays that left me thinking, "Gosh, sorry you haven't read some better books."
Per the New Yorker's profile page on the author:
Parul Sehgal is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Previously, she was a book critic at the New York Times, where she also worked as a senior editor and columnist. She has won awards from the New York Press Club and the National Book Critics Circle for her criticism. She teaches in the graduate creative-writing program at New York University.
So I think it's pretty safe to say she's read some better books.
posted by sinfony at 2:09 PM on December 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
Per the New Yorker's profile page on the author:
Parul Sehgal is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Previously, she was a book critic at the New York Times, where she also worked as a senior editor and columnist. She has won awards from the New York Press Club and the National Book Critics Circle for her criticism. She teaches in the graduate creative-writing program at New York University.
So I think it's pretty safe to say she's read some better books.
posted by sinfony at 2:09 PM on December 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
I went into the essay expecting to roll my eyes and quit reading after a paragraph or three. Frankly, I was expecting a people-sure-are-whiny-nowadays take.
I’m not sure about her take on real-world trauma, I find that somewhat tendentious, and I think that merely saying that a condition looms large in the societal moment does nothing to discredit the condition itself. For a period in the 17th Century, melancholy had real force in European culture, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t then, or isn’t now, a real thing.
All that said, I thought her literary analysis was really interesting. I keep coming across books where characters are explained through their traumas, and it always seems weird to me. I don’t know a single person in real life, including myself, who can be explained by their traumas. As a part of the whole, sure, but only a part.
But it suddenly makes sense when you consider it as a genre trope. In certain kinds of literature, trauma functions a bit like magic in fantasy novels. It explains what otherwise would be inexplicable. It makes the plot move in ways that the writer needs it to do, without having to get caught up in the details.
posted by Kattullus at 2:14 PM on December 27, 2021 [23 favorites]
I’m not sure about her take on real-world trauma, I find that somewhat tendentious, and I think that merely saying that a condition looms large in the societal moment does nothing to discredit the condition itself. For a period in the 17th Century, melancholy had real force in European culture, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t then, or isn’t now, a real thing.
All that said, I thought her literary analysis was really interesting. I keep coming across books where characters are explained through their traumas, and it always seems weird to me. I don’t know a single person in real life, including myself, who can be explained by their traumas. As a part of the whole, sure, but only a part.
But it suddenly makes sense when you consider it as a genre trope. In certain kinds of literature, trauma functions a bit like magic in fantasy novels. It explains what otherwise would be inexplicable. It makes the plot move in ways that the writer needs it to do, without having to get caught up in the details.
posted by Kattullus at 2:14 PM on December 27, 2021 [23 favorites]
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who immediately thought of our Star Trek Discovery FanFare threads when I read this.
With trauma so incredibly widespread in the populace, it's unsurprising that it would find its way into works of fiction, and unsurprising that those works would find a wide audience.
I think one of the points that Sehgal is getting at is that the more trauma is so widespread as to be nearly universal, then the more it loses power as a device for characterization. If everybody's got trauma, and yet here we are, a vast and wildly differing sea of humanity despite all our trauma, then "[Character] was traumatized by [horrible event in their past]" tells you little and less and about who they are now. It's somehow a more popular backstory than ever and yet simultaneously a less and less informative one. People can have vast arrays of symptoms of PTSD and reactions to trauma, so just dropping in a flashback or a clunky monologue about a tragic past event, as way of explaining how damaged they are now, is facile. Whereas if you do the actual work, build the character by showing how they think and act and feel now and what symptoms of past trauma they have now, you may not even need that clunky flashback or exposition at all; a reader's imagination is more than capable of filling it in.
Suffering isn't noble, and it doesn't make you stronger.
Not to derail this into another becoming another Discovery thread, but: I don't have a gripe about that show doing explorations of peoples' traumas and symptoms and mental scars. I do mind when they decide to do it in the middle of a damn space battle or similarly time-sensitive situation. There's nothing noble about suffering, but sometimes heroism requires putting aside or overcoming your suffering for as long as it takes to get the job done, and I do think there's something noble about that.
posted by mstokes650 at 2:17 PM on December 27, 2021 [14 favorites]
With trauma so incredibly widespread in the populace, it's unsurprising that it would find its way into works of fiction, and unsurprising that those works would find a wide audience.
I think one of the points that Sehgal is getting at is that the more trauma is so widespread as to be nearly universal, then the more it loses power as a device for characterization. If everybody's got trauma, and yet here we are, a vast and wildly differing sea of humanity despite all our trauma, then "[Character] was traumatized by [horrible event in their past]" tells you little and less and about who they are now. It's somehow a more popular backstory than ever and yet simultaneously a less and less informative one. People can have vast arrays of symptoms of PTSD and reactions to trauma, so just dropping in a flashback or a clunky monologue about a tragic past event, as way of explaining how damaged they are now, is facile. Whereas if you do the actual work, build the character by showing how they think and act and feel now and what symptoms of past trauma they have now, you may not even need that clunky flashback or exposition at all; a reader's imagination is more than capable of filling it in.
Suffering isn't noble, and it doesn't make you stronger.
Not to derail this into another becoming another Discovery thread, but: I don't have a gripe about that show doing explorations of peoples' traumas and symptoms and mental scars. I do mind when they decide to do it in the middle of a damn space battle or similarly time-sensitive situation. There's nothing noble about suffering, but sometimes heroism requires putting aside or overcoming your suffering for as long as it takes to get the job done, and I do think there's something noble about that.
posted by mstokes650 at 2:17 PM on December 27, 2021 [14 favorites]
PhineasGage Suffering may be inevitable, but how we deal with suffering, and the degree to which we suffer in life is not inevitable. To use myself as an example, would I still be an anxious person who has a lot of trouble with real-world socialization without my traumatic, multi-year experience of childhood bullying and systematic exclusion? Maybe. Who can say? But it probably would be a lot easier to manage that anxiety and shyness without the trauma of those years of bullying and exclusion, and I would suffer less.
A lot more people that you might think have experienced some form of trauma that is far more than mere "all-too-human unhappiness." And to that point, one person's trauma can be another person's memory of that "all-too-human unhappiness." It's far more complicated and deep than the Buddha could have known.
posted by SansPoint at 2:46 PM on December 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
A lot more people that you might think have experienced some form of trauma that is far more than mere "all-too-human unhappiness." And to that point, one person's trauma can be another person's memory of that "all-too-human unhappiness." It's far more complicated and deep than the Buddha could have known.
posted by SansPoint at 2:46 PM on December 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
I think this essay sort of works as an indictment of a very particular dramatization of trauma ("the trauma plot") that appears in lit fic, film, and television. Absolutely, many of our popular narratives about trauma tell a single story and lack nuance.
And...sure, although the essay is weirdly ahistorical for someone who must be reasonably steeped in recent cultural history. The Gothic, for instance, tends to be full of old traumas seeping into the present. (Particularly odd: Isabel Archer didn't have any great childhood trauma, that's an important aspect of her character, but we do get like ten pages of her childhood on meeting her!)
But there was an underlying tone of "why won't you people shut up about your life trauma, it's so undignified" that I really didn't care for. Human life is brutal! Our society in particular visits harm on a great many people! For a goodly proportion of them, those injuries persist and distort character in unhealthy ways! Sorry it bothers you to hear about that, man! It bothers me more that it's true!
posted by praemunire at 3:01 PM on December 27, 2021 [14 favorites]
And...sure, although the essay is weirdly ahistorical for someone who must be reasonably steeped in recent cultural history. The Gothic, for instance, tends to be full of old traumas seeping into the present. (Particularly odd: Isabel Archer didn't have any great childhood trauma, that's an important aspect of her character, but we do get like ten pages of her childhood on meeting her!)
But there was an underlying tone of "why won't you people shut up about your life trauma, it's so undignified" that I really didn't care for. Human life is brutal! Our society in particular visits harm on a great many people! For a goodly proportion of them, those injuries persist and distort character in unhealthy ways! Sorry it bothers you to hear about that, man! It bothers me more that it's true!
posted by praemunire at 3:01 PM on December 27, 2021 [14 favorites]
Dang, and this article doesn't even mention Complex PTSD, or complex trauma.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:58 PM on December 27, 2021
posted by Apocryphon at 3:58 PM on December 27, 2021
some 636,120 possible symptom combinations
The author doesn’t understand how math works and that in a multi-dimensional space the absolute number of combinations rapidly approaches infinity. If there was a disease with 10 distinct symptoms and patients could have any combination of those symptoms then the the number of possible symptom combinations is 10! (Ten factorial) or 3,628,800.
The ambiguity is moral as well as medical: a soldier who commits war crimes can share the diagnosis with his victims
The author doesn’t understand that a diagnosis is not a moral judgement. It is extremely dangerous to start associating a diagnosis with a moral judgment. Remember when they decided that AIDS was just a punishment for being gay.
At this point I stopped reading the article because the author doesn’t appear to have the basic education necessary to have an informed opinion on this subject.
posted by interogative mood at 4:37 PM on December 27, 2021 [11 favorites]
The author doesn’t understand how math works and that in a multi-dimensional space the absolute number of combinations rapidly approaches infinity. If there was a disease with 10 distinct symptoms and patients could have any combination of those symptoms then the the number of possible symptom combinations is 10! (Ten factorial) or 3,628,800.
The ambiguity is moral as well as medical: a soldier who commits war crimes can share the diagnosis with his victims
The author doesn’t understand that a diagnosis is not a moral judgement. It is extremely dangerous to start associating a diagnosis with a moral judgment. Remember when they decided that AIDS was just a punishment for being gay.
At this point I stopped reading the article because the author doesn’t appear to have the basic education necessary to have an informed opinion on this subject.
posted by interogative mood at 4:37 PM on December 27, 2021 [11 favorites]
The invocation of trauma promises access to some well-guarded bloody chamber; increasingly, though, we feel as if we have entered a rather generic motel room, with all the signs of heavy turnover. The second-season revelation of Ted Lasso’s childhood trauma only reduces him; his peculiar, almost sinister buoyancy is revealed to be merely a coping mechanism.[...]
And never mind pesky findings that the vast majority of people recover well from traumatic events and that post-traumatic growth is far more common than post-traumatic stress. In a recent Harper’s essay, the novelist Will Self suggests that the biggest beneficiaries of the trauma model are trauma theorists themselves, who are granted a kind of tenure, entrusted with a lifetime’s work of “witnessing” and interpreting. George A. Bonanno, the director of Columbia’s Loss, Trauma, and Emotion Lab and the author of “The End of Trauma,” has a blunter assessment: “People don’t seem to want to let go of the idea that everybody’s traumatized.”Fuck this reprehensible essay. Fiction doesn't exist solely to entertain people with a world where trauma makes people more interesting and trauma doesn't need to illuminate character to be worth depicting in fiction.
I have to believe the author is invested in denying her own trauma because I don't understand how you write something as judgemental and devoid of empathy as this essay without personal stakes.
posted by zymil at 5:24 PM on December 27, 2021 [12 favorites]
The Gothic, for instance, tends to be full of old traumas seeping into the present.I feel like there's an argument floating around that "old traumas seeping into the present" pretty much is the definition of the Gothic: it's Freudian drama about repressed trauma reasserting itself in supernatural form. And it's interesting to me that she focuses on Sula, rather than Beloved, which seems to be totally in that Gothic horror-as-supernatural-embodiment-of-repressed-trauma mode. I'm a little curious about what she'd have to say about Beloved. (My hunch is that she'd say it was ok, because, like Maus, it's not trite about trauma. But it's actually a little unclear to me whether she's objecting to literature that focuses on trauma at all or just to literature that deals with trauma in a trivializing way.)
I guess that I would come down on the side that says that a lot of people actually are dealing with trauma, and that's an important factor in actual life. I don't think that trauma is an all-encompassing thing that obliterates any other aspects of people's personalities, but I think it would be weird for literature to deny that trauma shapes some people at both the individual and cultural level. What people do with trauma, and whether they acknowledge it at all, is complicated and individual and the stuff of literature. But that doesn't mean that you have to pretend it doesn't exist, even if that's what literature and society often did in the past.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:49 PM on December 27, 2021 [8 favorites]
Accountants have a joke about auditors: they show up when the battle is over and bayonet the dead. The same might well be said of literary critics like this author.
A glittering resume as a book reviewer does not confer compassion or insight or life experience. This is a well-wrought essay in every way but it has no heart. I also stopped reading after a few paragraphs.
For those who were wondering, the 636,120 number came from an article in a medical journal. (Galatzer-Levy IR, Bryant RA. 636,120 Ways to Have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2013 Nov;8(6):651-62. doi: 10.1177/1745691613504115. PMID: 26173229.)
Here's a telling sentence from that article:
A number of PTSD symptoms have been shown to emerge in response to minor oral surgery, routine childbirth , and bad movies. These findings make sense if we consider that many of the symptoms of PTSD, such as nightmares and sleep disturbances, represent common nondescript stress symptoms.
Ahem. There is NOTHING routine about childbirth, and my god only two male authors would even put it right next to bad movies.
This essay and, the article it relies on, in my eyes, are both examples of academic elites scoring career points by discussing people like specimens. They feel intrustive, like a steel speculum, and leave me cold.
posted by dum spiro spero at 5:57 PM on December 27, 2021 [19 favorites]
A glittering resume as a book reviewer does not confer compassion or insight or life experience. This is a well-wrought essay in every way but it has no heart. I also stopped reading after a few paragraphs.
For those who were wondering, the 636,120 number came from an article in a medical journal. (Galatzer-Levy IR, Bryant RA. 636,120 Ways to Have Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2013 Nov;8(6):651-62. doi: 10.1177/1745691613504115. PMID: 26173229.)
Here's a telling sentence from that article:
A number of PTSD symptoms have been shown to emerge in response to minor oral surgery, routine childbirth , and bad movies. These findings make sense if we consider that many of the symptoms of PTSD, such as nightmares and sleep disturbances, represent common nondescript stress symptoms.
Ahem. There is NOTHING routine about childbirth, and my god only two male authors would even put it right next to bad movies.
This essay and, the article it relies on, in my eyes, are both examples of academic elites scoring career points by discussing people like specimens. They feel intrustive, like a steel speculum, and leave me cold.
posted by dum spiro spero at 5:57 PM on December 27, 2021 [19 favorites]
I think there are two concerns being conflated in this essay and they are not the same. One is that trauma is being overused in literature and film/TV as a plot device and way to describe character, and it's getting boring. The other is whether trauma is over-diagnosed as a medical condition and that trauma is being invoked too much in real life as a way of managing people's actual lived experiences.
This really crystallised for me in the final paragraphs where the writer describes how she would prefer to imagine the details of a character instead of having everything spelled out for her. OK, maybe invoking trauma and using it to explain a character is lazy writing, and maybe that's boring to read about in fiction. That has nothing to do with how people who have suffered experience trauma in real life, and doesn't really have any bearing on whether trauma is over-used in a therapeutic/medical setting.
posted by riddley at 5:59 PM on December 27, 2021 [27 favorites]
This really crystallised for me in the final paragraphs where the writer describes how she would prefer to imagine the details of a character instead of having everything spelled out for her. OK, maybe invoking trauma and using it to explain a character is lazy writing, and maybe that's boring to read about in fiction. That has nothing to do with how people who have suffered experience trauma in real life, and doesn't really have any bearing on whether trauma is over-used in a therapeutic/medical setting.
posted by riddley at 5:59 PM on December 27, 2021 [27 favorites]
@riddley thank you for saying what I was thinking but so much better. Somewhat ironically, this juxtaposition of medical praxis with structuralist critique seems itself to be an emerging genre, and cloying more often than not.
posted by dum spiro spero at 6:06 PM on December 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by dum spiro spero at 6:06 PM on December 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
I just want to say I have nothing to say on the merits of her claim that "there's too much Trauma in fiction". I could see that being the case. I also think there are plenty of people who don't get the care they need (as mentioned above the fight to even HAVE trauma recognized for some people)....
What I did want to say though was "Boy she sure sounds like those assholes who says 'I got spanked as a child and *I* was never harmed by it.'" Bully for you.
There's probably a better way to critique this without denying the legitimacy of trauma or those who suffer it and without passing judgement on who is "deserving of trauma" (e.g. *really has it*) and who doesn't (those sensitive snowflakes who are just having a hard time with life).
I will admit I did hear about the Discovery thing and my friend who very much has some trauma rolled her eyes at "stopping the action every 5 seconds to talk about their trauma" (paraphrasing, obvs). Execution could probably have been better and IDK what the story behind it was (look even here I play into the game "what's the story behind it(was it a real trauma?)" nice play, you got me to buy into your poor argument about your premise, author.)
posted by symbioid at 6:27 PM on December 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
What I did want to say though was "Boy she sure sounds like those assholes who says 'I got spanked as a child and *I* was never harmed by it.'" Bully for you.
There's probably a better way to critique this without denying the legitimacy of trauma or those who suffer it and without passing judgement on who is "deserving of trauma" (e.g. *really has it*) and who doesn't (those sensitive snowflakes who are just having a hard time with life).
I will admit I did hear about the Discovery thing and my friend who very much has some trauma rolled her eyes at "stopping the action every 5 seconds to talk about their trauma" (paraphrasing, obvs). Execution could probably have been better and IDK what the story behind it was (look even here I play into the game "what's the story behind it(was it a real trauma?)" nice play, you got me to buy into your poor argument about your premise, author.)
posted by symbioid at 6:27 PM on December 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
Is the author aware that the DSM has undergone two major revisions since 1980, with some attention paid to PTSD?
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:41 PM on December 27, 2021
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:41 PM on December 27, 2021
Per the New Yorker's profile page on the author [...]
I think it's pretty safe to say she's read some better books.
I think they've certainly read better books, but also, as a person who reads professionally, is almost certainly reading more bad fiction than almost anyone you will ever meet. I can very easily imagine books where some characters back story is lovingly detailed, but has no effect on the 'main' story, and is left only as disconnected backdrop flavor.
I'm imagining this as a literary fiction version of the thing that happened in YA where suddenly every book is about unlikely paranormal romance blooming in a battle royale...
posted by kaibutsu at 12:01 AM on December 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
I think it's pretty safe to say she's read some better books.
I think they've certainly read better books, but also, as a person who reads professionally, is almost certainly reading more bad fiction than almost anyone you will ever meet. I can very easily imagine books where some characters back story is lovingly detailed, but has no effect on the 'main' story, and is left only as disconnected backdrop flavor.
I'm imagining this as a literary fiction version of the thing that happened in YA where suddenly every book is about unlikely paranormal romance blooming in a battle royale...
posted by kaibutsu at 12:01 AM on December 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
idk, I feel like I read a different article than most here, which is to say that I read the entire article rather than proudly giving up as soon as my priors were imagined to be confirmed. From reading the entire article, I think two points emerge: 1) too many lazy cookie cutter trauma plots out there, and 2) trauma is a more complicated subject than one would be led to believe by the lazy cookie cutter trauma plots.
posted by sinfony at 5:35 AM on December 28, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by sinfony at 5:35 AM on December 28, 2021 [10 favorites]
I thought I might agree with the premise of this critique, because I too sometimes roll my eyes when I come across a lazy use of trauma-as-backstory, or rape-as-punishment (not that rape can't be or historically hasn't been but when your multi-book fantasy series only uses that tool...) As someone more-than-sufficiently diagnosed with PTSD decades ago, I personally try to look for a combination of ways to write and express human experience without leaning too much on trauma. So I'm sympathetic.
But I found the article was a bit of a mess. First, backstory is not plot. If her point is that elaborate backstory is boring, well, give more examples.
Also the examples she chose seemed badly chosen. Anne with an E is a failure I would agree with in many, many ways, and yes got very soap opera-y about the trauma. But what it failed as was its aim at a more realistic, more historical approach. Anne always had a traumatic backstory. (I'm still waiting for the #MeToo version of Emily of New Moon, man.)
Second, traumatic backstory is not a new thing. Dido and Aeneas! Miss Havisham! The Book of Lamentations!
Third, and this is actually my core critique -- I think the author is conflating all negative emotion as trauma, not the actual creators of works. For example, WandaVision may have been discussed online as exploring Wanda's trauma, but I think if you just watch the show it's presented more as a meditation on grief.
(And certainly grief and trauma are interrelated but they are not the same thing - I grieve the loss of my daughter; the trauma of her delivery was experienced in my body as my hip was dislocated and I lost a lot of blood; there is a psychological trauma that lives between both experiences but they really are distinct.)
Fourth, the screed about "well post-traumatic growth is more common!" just...irritates me. I am a post-traumatic growth individual for sure, but I also experience eddies that are related to my trauma. It's both. And I don't find a lack of narratives in literature where people overcome their trauma or are motivated by it. I'm sure she's better read than I am so maybe her pile is full of sameness but she actually lists a lot of examples in her piece.
Anyways tl;dr - I think this article has potentially some good points but the author is the one conflating all trauma to the point that I can't make heads or tails of it really.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:58 AM on December 28, 2021 [12 favorites]
But I found the article was a bit of a mess. First, backstory is not plot. If her point is that elaborate backstory is boring, well, give more examples.
Also the examples she chose seemed badly chosen. Anne with an E is a failure I would agree with in many, many ways, and yes got very soap opera-y about the trauma. But what it failed as was its aim at a more realistic, more historical approach. Anne always had a traumatic backstory. (I'm still waiting for the #MeToo version of Emily of New Moon, man.)
Second, traumatic backstory is not a new thing. Dido and Aeneas! Miss Havisham! The Book of Lamentations!
Third, and this is actually my core critique -- I think the author is conflating all negative emotion as trauma, not the actual creators of works. For example, WandaVision may have been discussed online as exploring Wanda's trauma, but I think if you just watch the show it's presented more as a meditation on grief.
(And certainly grief and trauma are interrelated but they are not the same thing - I grieve the loss of my daughter; the trauma of her delivery was experienced in my body as my hip was dislocated and I lost a lot of blood; there is a psychological trauma that lives between both experiences but they really are distinct.)
Fourth, the screed about "well post-traumatic growth is more common!" just...irritates me. I am a post-traumatic growth individual for sure, but I also experience eddies that are related to my trauma. It's both. And I don't find a lack of narratives in literature where people overcome their trauma or are motivated by it. I'm sure she's better read than I am so maybe her pile is full of sameness but she actually lists a lot of examples in her piece.
Anyways tl;dr - I think this article has potentially some good points but the author is the one conflating all trauma to the point that I can't make heads or tails of it really.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:58 AM on December 28, 2021 [12 favorites]
Trauma is hard to talk about (in part) because by definition, the brain and body have trouble processing and communicating to other people about the traumatic event. So I think it's kind of a miracle that society is actually this willing to look at how the mind and body respond to traumatic events. I have wondered at times if the term "trauma" has become oversaturated or misapplied, but even if it has, maybe that is part of the process of society trying to look at something that doesn't want to be looked at or spoken about.
On the other hand, I kind of agree with a point that the author was trying to make: that the use of trauma as a way of overexplaining everything about a character is hacky and boring. Overexplaining a character's motivations in general amounts to a sort of overwrought worldbuilding where everything has an explanation, every loose end must be tied away, and you are spoonfed a just-so story with no mystery to it. I just think the author did a bad job making that point.
posted by cubeb at 7:47 AM on December 28, 2021 [4 favorites]
On the other hand, I kind of agree with a point that the author was trying to make: that the use of trauma as a way of overexplaining everything about a character is hacky and boring. Overexplaining a character's motivations in general amounts to a sort of overwrought worldbuilding where everything has an explanation, every loose end must be tied away, and you are spoonfed a just-so story with no mystery to it. I just think the author did a bad job making that point.
posted by cubeb at 7:47 AM on December 28, 2021 [4 favorites]
trauma is a more complicated subject than one would be led to believe by the lazy cookie cutter trauma plots
Well, I guess that would be a problem for people who derive their understanding solely from such things, but if I were that lazy a thinker, I wouldn't admit it out loud.
posted by praemunire at 7:52 AM on December 28, 2021 [4 favorites]
Well, I guess that would be a problem for people who derive their understanding solely from such things, but if I were that lazy a thinker, I wouldn't admit it out loud.
posted by praemunire at 7:52 AM on December 28, 2021 [4 favorites]
Overexplaining a character's motivations in general amounts to a sort of overwrought worldbuilding where everything has an explanation, every loose end must be tied away, and you are spoonfed a just-so story with no mystery to it.
See: season 4 of Sherlock, which is just incomprehensibly hacky in the way it exemplifies this after a couple of years of memorably giving space to let the Holmes' weirdnesses just live without any particular need for a Dramatic Explanation.
posted by praemunire at 7:55 AM on December 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
See: season 4 of Sherlock, which is just incomprehensibly hacky in the way it exemplifies this after a couple of years of memorably giving space to let the Holmes' weirdnesses just live without any particular need for a Dramatic Explanation.
posted by praemunire at 7:55 AM on December 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
I read the entire article rather than proudly giving up as soon as my priors were imagined to be confirmed
Oh please.
posted by sock poppet at 1:04 PM on December 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
Oh please.
posted by sock poppet at 1:04 PM on December 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
I tend to be pretty wary of these kinds of "woe betide fiction in these degenerate days" kind of essays--they generally indicate either a writer who is reading very narrowly or one who has a particular bugbear which they are careful to cherry-pick their evidence for. And here is Sehgal picking her examples very carefully indeed: Austen, but not the Brontës; Eliot, but not Dickens; James, but not Hardy; Woolf, but not Sarton. Or even within a single's author's work, as ArbitraryAndCapricious points out: Sula but not Sethe.
Nor do I find her modern examples convincing. I happened to have just re-read Anne of Green Gables: Sehgal seems to think that representing Anne's past as abusive is nonsensical. I would say that the neglect and abuse she suffered is clearly (if genteelly) indicated by the text, especially by Marilla's reaction to hearing Anne's story. It seems impossible that any sensitive reader with even the most cursory knowledge of the desperate vulnerability of children (especially girls) in that time should not be able to understand it. (And though the first book only clearly indicates severe neglect rather than physical violence, it's not at all a reach to interpret, in the sequel, Anne's utter refusal to use corporal punishment on her students--despite everyone around her urging otherwise--as based in personal experience.)
But most of all, it feels like this essay is at least ten years too late, as if it was written in the heyday of the "ladyblog" backlash. And a lot of those bloggers and essayists have gone on to write about the complex feelings that can arise from being encouraged by the market to monetize one's traumas, as have many black, poc, and queer writers. Sehgal leaves these perspectives also out of her essay. Which is a shame, because there are a lot of interesting things to say about the ways we deal (or don't deal) with trauma as a society and in art; and a lot of nuances about the use of "trauma" as a winning rhetorical device that usually ends up reinforcing injustice. Alternately, a good essay could probably come out of someone really deep-diving into their own knee-jerk distaste for certain kinds of stories. But this kind of dressing up of personal preference as a grand truth... well, she got a paycheck out of it anyway.
posted by radiogreentea at 2:15 PM on December 28, 2021 [11 favorites]
Nor do I find her modern examples convincing. I happened to have just re-read Anne of Green Gables: Sehgal seems to think that representing Anne's past as abusive is nonsensical. I would say that the neglect and abuse she suffered is clearly (if genteelly) indicated by the text, especially by Marilla's reaction to hearing Anne's story. It seems impossible that any sensitive reader with even the most cursory knowledge of the desperate vulnerability of children (especially girls) in that time should not be able to understand it. (And though the first book only clearly indicates severe neglect rather than physical violence, it's not at all a reach to interpret, in the sequel, Anne's utter refusal to use corporal punishment on her students--despite everyone around her urging otherwise--as based in personal experience.)
But most of all, it feels like this essay is at least ten years too late, as if it was written in the heyday of the "ladyblog" backlash. And a lot of those bloggers and essayists have gone on to write about the complex feelings that can arise from being encouraged by the market to monetize one's traumas, as have many black, poc, and queer writers. Sehgal leaves these perspectives also out of her essay. Which is a shame, because there are a lot of interesting things to say about the ways we deal (or don't deal) with trauma as a society and in art; and a lot of nuances about the use of "trauma" as a winning rhetorical device that usually ends up reinforcing injustice. Alternately, a good essay could probably come out of someone really deep-diving into their own knee-jerk distaste for certain kinds of stories. But this kind of dressing up of personal preference as a grand truth... well, she got a paycheck out of it anyway.
posted by radiogreentea at 2:15 PM on December 28, 2021 [11 favorites]
The fact that this writer is a book reviewer by trade means she isn't allowed to stop reading shitty books, she has to finish every single thing she's been assigned to read. This helps me understand why she believes there's too much [insert issue] in literature these days. My own reading habits are utterly ruthless. Ten or fifteen pages is all any book gets from me to make its case - and my favorite genre is pretentious literary crap, so 99% fail the cut. Makes it hard for me to spot trends in contemporary fiction.
But I think she's on to something here. It's easy to say "just avoid the dreck, be more selective, you'll find some excellent books". But that's not the point, is it. There IS something happening out there in the culture at large. The only form of media that I've ever consumed so indiscriminately in full is TikTok videos, because they're too fucking short for me to x out of before they're finished playing, and I swear I could write this exact essay, word for word, about TikTok videos. Pop psychology is having a real moment right now peddling truly atrocious bastardized content about not just trauma but also "narcissism", "self care", whatever. Gen X-ish psychologists with actual PhDs are out there cranking out ten YouTube videos a week about how your mother/boyfriend/bff is a narcissist if they exhibit these five traits, millennial instagram influencers with zero qualifications are branding themselves as psychology experts and posting statements about "emotional vampires" over photos of themselves in yoga poses, and zoomers are making viral TikToks about how every human trait and behavior under the sun is a "trauma response". For every informative piece of content out there, there's fifty more which are utter dreck. It's a trend that makes me feel both desperately optimistic and horrified at the same time.
posted by MiraK at 8:18 AM on December 30, 2021 [5 favorites]
But I think she's on to something here. It's easy to say "just avoid the dreck, be more selective, you'll find some excellent books". But that's not the point, is it. There IS something happening out there in the culture at large. The only form of media that I've ever consumed so indiscriminately in full is TikTok videos, because they're too fucking short for me to x out of before they're finished playing, and I swear I could write this exact essay, word for word, about TikTok videos. Pop psychology is having a real moment right now peddling truly atrocious bastardized content about not just trauma but also "narcissism", "self care", whatever. Gen X-ish psychologists with actual PhDs are out there cranking out ten YouTube videos a week about how your mother/boyfriend/bff is a narcissist if they exhibit these five traits, millennial instagram influencers with zero qualifications are branding themselves as psychology experts and posting statements about "emotional vampires" over photos of themselves in yoga poses, and zoomers are making viral TikToks about how every human trait and behavior under the sun is a "trauma response". For every informative piece of content out there, there's fifty more which are utter dreck. It's a trend that makes me feel both desperately optimistic and horrified at the same time.
posted by MiraK at 8:18 AM on December 30, 2021 [5 favorites]
For every informative piece of content out there, there's fifty more which are utter dreck. It's a trend that makes me feel both desperately optimistic and horrified at the same time.
I feel you! And yet as someone who lived through the Michelle Remembers years I'm not sure it's that new.
I kind of wish she had taken two similar narratives and compared and contrasted so I could hone in on her specific point, like taking the 1987 Anne of Avonlea adaptation and comparing it to the Anne with an E, or Superman (Reeve) vs. whatever is going on now. I'd be down with that.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:09 AM on December 30, 2021 [5 favorites]
I feel you! And yet as someone who lived through the Michelle Remembers years I'm not sure it's that new.
I kind of wish she had taken two similar narratives and compared and contrasted so I could hone in on her specific point, like taking the 1987 Anne of Avonlea adaptation and comparing it to the Anne with an E, or Superman (Reeve) vs. whatever is going on now. I'd be down with that.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:09 AM on December 30, 2021 [5 favorites]
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posted by DMelanogaster at 11:39 AM on December 27, 2021 [7 favorites]