Trauma

It is an interesting fact about Developmental Trauma Disorder is largely invisible to those who suffer from it.  It often shows up in muted emotionality, dissociation, which can quite easily hide as intellectualism.

And I wonder if a large part of the reason the American Psychiatric Association is refusing to do the obvious thing and put this disorder into their DSM is that most of THEM suffer from it.

If you hate life, and feel unwanted, unloved, and disconnected, many professions want you.  Engineers want you.  Medical Science wants you.  The military and Law Enforcement want you.  All of them get to enjoy higher status for being “dispassionate” and “objective”.

And the people who seem to want to run the world: they, too, no doubt suffer from severe developmental traumas.

van der Kolk has not mentioned this yet–none of the books I have read have–but it would seem obvious that both sociopathy and narcissism are part of the spectrum of Developmental Trauma Disorders.  They are grotesque failures of mirroring, and social engagement.  I assume these therapists are trying to keep things positive, and allow other specialists to make these connections, but I’m just the man to go negative.