Traumas DON’T Exist?

14.11.24

For this article, I want to explore the perspective on trauma from the 3 giants of psychology: Freud, Adler, and Carl Jung. A true Mexican standoff.

For the sake of my argument, let’s define trauma as past experiences that continue to affect us negatively in the present moment and compulsively shape our actions and decisions.

Freud (Etiology)

The first ideas popularized about trauma were coined by Freud. At that time, they were seeking to establish a direct correlation between someone’s past experiences and their trauma.

The problem is that they quickly realized this perspective was faulty. People can go through the exact same event and react in completely different ways. It’s common knowledge that what’s debilitating for one person, isn’t for another.

They concluded that an isolated event isn’t enough to produce trauma. In that sense, there had to be prior psychological tendencies that influence people’s reactions.

Before this, Freud maintained his causal approach, that is, understanding how past experiences shape our lives. We call this perspective etiology.

Consequently, Freud is always concerned with finding the origins of our symptoms and behaviors, the basic idea is that once we find the cause and experience a catharsis the symptoms can be reduced and the emotional charge dissipates. An important tool to dig for traumatic memories was hypnosis.

Adler (Teleology)

Adler proposes the exact opposite and completely rejects this notion of trauma. Instead of looking at the past, he says we must adopt a future-oriented approach called teleology.

In his view, symptoms are meant to be interpreted under the paradigm of a goal to be achieved. Moreover, Adler states that the most important factor lies in the subjective meaning and value we attribute to what happened, as it shapes how we deal with it. Interestingly, this is one of the foundations of CBT.

Understanding Adler is quite simple and to illustrate his perspective I’ll share a personal example. As a kid, I got sick one day and my mom allowed me to miss school. This got stuck in my mind and a few weeks later I pretended to be sick to avoid dealing with a presentation.

It’s crazy because part of me knew what I was doing but at the same time, I really felt physically sick and spent most of the day in bed. It’s clear that these symptoms had a goal to be achieved.

The problem is that many people carry these maladaptive strategies to adult life and play the victim to avoid taking responsibility and weaponize their incompetence.

Adler goes so far as to say that the baby is the most powerful being on the planet since through their fragility, babies can freely unleash their wrath and deploy their reign of tyranny, haha.

That’s exactly how victimhood-based movements seek to control others. They demand tolerance and that you cater to their every need, when you don’t attend to their childish demands, they retaliate revealing their true colors and who in fact is intolerant.

Carl Jung

Carl Jung was in the middle of this conflict and when he was done hiding in his tower, he understood both Adler and Freud were partially correct. Jungian Psychology is built on conciliating paradoxes that’s why Jung strived to unite both perspectives.

In his view, symptoms are historical and have a cause BUT they also have a direction and purpose. Let’s explore a simple example. Adopting people-pleasing and codependent behaviors is often a result of having experienced emotionally unstable parents whom you always tried to appease.

On the flip side, keeping codependent behaviors can also be a way of avoiding taking full responsibility for your life, as you’re constantly looking for someone to save you. To Jung, truth is an instrument and is completely dependent on context.

Moreover, Carl Jung coincides with the idea that our subjective individual pre-dispositions directly influence our interpretation of reality and he takes this one step further with his work on the Psychological Types.

He explains that the psyche is structured around four functions, namely Thinking, Feeling, Sensation, and Intuition, and also possesses an extraverted and introverted tendency.

This leads us to the most important concept in Jungian Psychology, i.e., conscious attitude. This is basically how a person is wired, it’s a sum of their belief system, core values, individual pre-dispositions, and their typology. In summary, conscious attitude is someone’s modus operandi.

In that sense, Carl Jung doesn’t work with the Freudian notion of trauma either, he focuses on the psychodynamics between conscious and unconscious and explains that neurosis happens when we adopt a rigid and unilateral conscious attitude, which allows complexes to dominate the individual.

Therefore, Jungian Psychology focuses on correcting someone’s conscious attitude to reach harmony between the conscious and unconscious mind and develop the personality.

The Verdict

Well, in a Mexican standoff, there’s no man standing, and whenever we discuss paradoxical views that’s exactly what ends up happening. Most people aren’t willing to be flexible and want to own the truth. The problem is that staying with only one approach invariably leads to a unilateral perspective and produces blind spots.

Also, the research on trauma has advanced quite a lot and we have to account for new possibilities but saying that these 3 giants are dated is pure ignorance since many modern approaches are trying to reinvent the wheel.

I’ll share my views on the pros and cons of each approach:

The causal perspective is excellent for helping us uncover the origins of our behaviors, spot patterns, and understand why we are the way we are. It makes us feel validated realize “we’re not crazy”, and dissipate the emotional charge of certain memories.

Moreover, this knowledge helps us separate what is our responsibility from others, and in many cases, it helps people forgive their caregivers once they understand their past.

But staying with the causal perspective often makes people feel stuck in the past and creates a neurotic obsession with finding the “ultimate why”, the problem is that no “why” or explanation is ever satisfying. Since we can’t change the past, this can easily lead to victimhood by using past experiences to justify our behaviors.

Moreover, it’s impossible to establish definite causes for our psychological development as the individual component is always more prevalent.

When we study attachment styles, for instance, it’s clear that the same environment can evoke either one of them. Obviously, we can infer correlations but never direct causation.

Adler’s approach is excellent to bring us to the present moment and envision a better future. It helps us overcome the effects of a victim mentality and regain our power.

But of course, this comes with the price of taking full responsibility for our actions and decisions as more often than not, we’re the ones creating our own suffering. However, it can obviously overlook the effect of certain experiences and patterns can be missed.

Lastly, Carl Jung was the Jedi master of psychodynamics, as he created a map to decode the symbolic language of the unconscious. Ideas like the shadow can easily be integrated with any psychological approach. And his typological method is a legendary tool for understanding individual tendencies and the human psyche.

On the flip side, Jung’s ideas can be hard to grasp and apply, there’s a tendency for useless abstractions and excessive mental masturbation in the Jungian community. And when you learn about all the new age nonsense it’s easy to understand why so many people don’t take Jungian Psychology seriously.

Moreover, although Carl Jung urged people to apply their insights to real life, he never left a step-by-step and overly focused on symbolism.

It’s interesting that Jung was aware of a secret link between mind and matter and even said there’s a psychic element in matter. People laughed at him but now we have somatic approaches, like the works of Bessel Van der Kolk and Peter Levine, proving him right.

Lastly, Jung is one of the few psychologists who was interested in helping people create their unique sense of meaning and develop their own spirituality by reconnecting with the unconscious.

Rafael Krüger – Live an Audacious Life

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