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Sinead O’Connor has died, almost certainly by her own hand. She suffered throughout her life from the psychic consequences of childhood abuse, which we call “mental illness.” Psychology seems now to have come to a consensus that most or all mental illness is the result of such abuse in childhood, of chronic PTSD.
But what is PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder—and what causes it? What is the trauma?
The common assumption is that it is fear of being physically harmed. That is what “trauma” means in medicine—a physical injury. Soldiers in WWI who suffered from “shell shock” were accused of cowardice.
But that’s not right.
A perceptive student of mine, asked to write on the subject of PTSD, noted that nobody experiences PTSD when they watch someone die in their bed. Yet they do when they see someone murdered, or killed in war. Why?
Fear of being killed themselves? But surely either represents physical harm; when you’re dead, you’re dead. If it is death we are afraid of, why aren’t we equally traumatized by either?
The difference is the perception, in the latter case, of injustice, of evil.
It is coming in contact with evil, the awareness that something evil is taking place, that causes spiritual trauma.
The real trauma in war is therefore not fear of being killed, but fear of killing. To anyone with a healthy conscience, war is a moral dilemma. That is the spiritual trauma.
And part of the trauma is not knowing what morality requires of you; the sense of having no moral option available. In war, is it more moral to shoot at strangers, or to desert your comrades in the field? Having witnessed a murder, was there something you could and should have done?
Most ordinary people protect themselves from this trauma by denying that evil exists. Hitler, say, was just a madman. Murderers and the like are prisoners of their upbringing. Any conficts are based on some “misunderstanding.”
Those raised by a parent who openly practices or advocates immorality are inevitably going to be wounded spiritually by this. They will either embrace the parent’s immorality as righteous, and as their own creed, and perpetuate this evil on the next generation; or else be deeply morally conflicted, anxious, depressed.
This being so, experiencing “mental illness,” PTSD, is a warrant that you are a good person, and sincere. You are not in denial.
You could always see the sincerity in Sinead O’Connor’s eyes, and hear it in her voice.
