Great points on being raised by more adults, rites of passage, and the context in which combat PTSD occurred. I don't disagree - these were definitely (sometimes powerfully) mediating factors.
And yes, it's an open question as to the degree of suppression of PTSD and natural traumatic resolution in pre-industrial societies.
I do also agree that there has been a deep phenomenological understanding of trauma for many, many generations of humanity. It most likely wasn't called "trauma" (until perhaps recently).
I also believe that our current understanding of this phenomenon has reached a level of sophistication that we've never had before, and this is bolstered by various advances in culture, science, and policy. For example, the legal use of entheogens as a medically prescribed treatment for PTSD (of course, these could be used to treat PTSD hundreds of years ago, and there were and are beautiful traditions around this -- the models were just different, though).
We may have been less trauma-naive and less trauma-generating at some point in our collective history; I wonder about the level of holism of the models of trauma at that time.
That’s a good point, we had the necessary pieces scattered across cultures and time but not all at one place. Looking forward to the integration modern psychology can afford us.
And yes, it's an open question as to the degree of suppression of PTSD and natural traumatic resolution in pre-industrial societies.
I do also agree that there has been a deep phenomenological understanding of trauma for many, many generations of humanity. It most likely wasn't called "trauma" (until perhaps recently).
I also believe that our current understanding of this phenomenon has reached a level of sophistication that we've never had before, and this is bolstered by various advances in culture, science, and policy. For example, the legal use of entheogens as a medically prescribed treatment for PTSD (of course, these could be used to treat PTSD hundreds of years ago, and there were and are beautiful traditions around this -- the models were just different, though).
We may have been less trauma-naive and less trauma-generating at some point in our collective history; I wonder about the level of holism of the models of trauma at that time.