The Trauma Script
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Say the words fairy tale and a pleasant vision comes to mind. Beautiful princesses, charming dwarves, and adorable animals.
How do fairy tales reflect human experiences with trauma?
But in their original incarnation, fairy tales were a lot gristlier than the sunny stories we tell today. Grimm's fairy tales, first published in Germany in 1812, included stories like The Robber Bridegroom. It told of a young woman who visits the home of the man to whom she is engaged, only to discover that he is the leader of a band of cannibalistic robbers. She hides and watches as the robbers murder another young woman, cut her up, and eat her. She exposes the robbers by giving the authorities a victim's severed finger, which has a ring on it. In another tale called The Juniper Tree, a stepmother kills her stepson, chops him up, and serves him in a stew to his unsuspecting father. His sister collects the boy's bones and buries them under a juniper tree.
The boy is reborn as a bird who kills the stepmom by dropping a stone on her head. Even Snow White, the sweet story we know from the Disney version, was far scarier in original form. The Evil Queen, jealous of her beautiful stepdaughter Snow White, tries several times to kill the girl. After the Evil Queen is caught, she is forced to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance until she dies. Today, these collections of gruesome and ghastly tales are often presented to children in highly sanitized form. As parents and teachers, many of us are worried about causing irreparable psychic harm. But what does that say about earlier generations of caregivers who happily read these stories to their kids? Did they care less about the well-being of their offspring?
Historical accounts do not suggest these stories traumatized children in the past. Indeed, the enduring popularity of grisly stories, sometimes over centuries, suggests there was robust appetite for such tales. So, what changed? Today, we take a deep dive, not into the world of children's fairy tales, but the larger question of how we think human beings respond to accounts and experiences of tragedy, and how they actually respond. Grief, Trauma and Resilience, this week on Hidden Brain.
I grew up in India where traffic accidents and deaths were commonplace. I personally know multiple friends and family members who died in traffic crashes. When I first came to the United States, I was surprised that people talked a lot more about traffic safety, even though the roads were much safer. In time, I came to realize that the very ubiquity of traffic fatalities in India made people more blasé. Things that happen every day fade into the background. Airplane crashes, which are rare, draw intense attention. The same thing happens to cultures over time. Things that were surprising in one day and age become commonplace in another. And things that are seen as commonplace in one day and age can come to be seen as shocking.
At Columbia University, psychologist George Bonanno has studied how many cultures today have come to think about suffering and grief and tragedy very differently than people did in the past. George Bonanno, welcome to Hidden Brain. Thank you so much, Shankar. I'm very happy to be with you to talk with you. George, I'm wondering if I could start with a personal story. You grew up in Chicago. How would you describe your relationship with your dad?
I would say it was a very complicated and fraught relationship. The neighborhood I grew up in was a Sicilian neighborhood, Sicilian immigrants, and it was a tough neighborhood. My father would beat us at times. The beatings were not as bad as the anger that he exhibited. He would go into these rages, and he was a very scary human being then.
I understand that he himself was someone who took on a lot as he went through his life. And in some ways, you saw that, and perhaps alone among your siblings, you actually empathized with what he was going through. Can you describe what that was like, George?
Yeah, my father worked very, very hard and I think was becoming depressed.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:13
2
How do fairy tales reflect human experiences with trauma?
0:13–12:21
3
What insights does George Bonanno offer about grief and resilience?
12:21–20:06
4
How does George Bonanno's personal story shape his views on trauma?
20:06–41:14
5
What are the common reactions to loss observed by researchers?
41:14–50:06