[HN Gopher] Hard to See: How trauma became synonymous with authe...
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Hard to See: How trauma became synonymous with authenticity
Author : acsillag
Score : 39 points
Date : 2022-05-10 00:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (reallifemag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reallifemag.com)
| jgerrish wrote:
| We need some more "complicated" and "complex" characters. We need
| more "underdogs".
|
| It's not a bottom up thing necessarily, although individuals have
| no choice in that game-theory scenario if they want to succeed.
| It was a top-level design decision.
|
| Sorry.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > Trauma has become reduced to a trope
|
| And here in lies the problem. Trauma and reactions to it have
| always existed. Perhaps in the past, people had communities to
| lean on and help them cope. Or they just drank themselves to
| death. (Always a popular option.)
|
| Mental illness has also existed for a very long time.
| Schizophrenia isn't a new disease. It's just a new, better
| understood label.
|
| The science behind psychology is still very new in the long view
| of history.
|
| And as with all science, people have run away with it. In recent
| history, radiation was seen as healthy and Radium was a fad.
| Eventually we learned what Radium was and stopped that nonsense.
|
| Our understanding of trauma will change too. We're still in the
| discovery phase of this science. Mental health is no longer a
| taboo topic. And people are running away with it, for one reason
| or another.
|
| Personally, I welcome the change, but it's going to be a rough
| few decades before this settles down. If someone can use
| something for attention, they will.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is ahistorical. Psychology has fixated on trauma as the
| source of neurosis since
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Breuer and Anna O., and the
| body of work behind it is almost entirely pseudoscience.
|
| > Schizophrenia isn't a new disease. It's just a new, better
| understood label.
|
| Really? That's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Bleuler, a
| contemporary of Breuer and Freud. It's not new, refers to a
| vague cluster of symptoms rather than a specific disease, and
| it's not in any way understood.
|
| IMO, what's happened is that everybody became an amateur
| psychologist, effectively medicalizing _gossip._ You can 't
| just say that you don't like someone anymore, or that they're
| an asshole, you have to diagnose them. Ironically, if they wear
| that diagnosis around as a badge of honor, you're not allowed
| to notice it or consider it in any decisionmaking involving
| that person, lest you become an abuser.
|
| Disguising gossip as commentary or insight is the addiction.
|
| edit: and the seminal contribution to the _victims '
| communities_ that politics has now become a battle between was
| made by big pharma financing patients' groups for specific
| diseases and using them as lobbying organizations to put
| pressure on the FDA and insurance companies.
| flatline wrote:
| I think in the context of the parent post, 1800s is _recent_.
|
| There's a different between someone having narcissistic
| traits and being diagnosed with NPD, but we casually say both
| of them are narcissists. Everyone has some of those traits,
| they just don't run their lives. All language is
| fundamentally shorthand for real or imagined phenomena, and
| can be both descriptive and misleading. Clusters of
| personality traits can be enlightening even in the context of
| gossip!
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| 1800s would be recent in the scales I'm talking about.
| tfigueroa wrote:
| This explains feelings I've had watching _Euphoria_. I've noticed
| a worsening physiological response _just watching the show_ , so
| haven't finished season 2.
|
| Initially I felt there was some catharsis to get out of it, but
| I've had to stop myself and ask what the effects really are. More
| cortisol? Less shock from real trauma? I'm not sure.
|
| Yet I was drawn in by the trauma, and the thought - formed
| somewhere in my mind - that these dark, traumatic things were
| more _authentic_ , and so there was something real and authentic
| to get out of watching it. But so far, there isn't much of a
| thesis, or something, to really think about and learn from. So
| I'm done for now.
|
| edit: formatting
| odessacubbage wrote:
| so much of modern tv just feels like misery porn.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Along these lines, modern dramatic TV makes me incredibly
| anxious. I shouldn't need to take medication to watch a TV
| show.
| goatlover wrote:
| There's a third and fourth spinoff of The Walking Dead coming
| out if that's your thing.
| sparker72678 wrote:
| I think there is an aspect to the recent fixation on trauma that
| is a response to the tightly curated personas that many present
| online. Not everyone can/wants to display that "successful"
| appearance, and some choose to flip the script and emphasize
| their suffering, which it turns out can garner just as much
| attention.
| livinginfear wrote:
| Maybe this relates to how the west seems to consider the highest
| form of self-actualization to be triumph over adversity. It makes
| up the core narrative structures of western literature. It
| defines the core story arc show on television. I wasn't at all
| surprised all those years ago when Lana Del Ray affected this
| faux veneer of 'prom queen goes melancholy'. It's existed
| forever, it's just broken mainstream now.
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(page generated 2022-05-11 23:00 UTC)