We are a fragile species. Those of us who experienced childhood trauma carry it all our lives, even if it only seems to pop out unexpectedly from time to time. This gets me to thinking about the evolution of psychology. Not the discipline psychology, but of the human mental map. Things that can upset a roomful of people these days would’ve washed over an entire village unnoticed yesteryear. Did people then really feel as angry and breakable as we do now? Please understand, I’m not advocating the view that people of previous ages were better, or even stronger than we currently are. I just wonder if their circumstances made it so that what we think of as therapy wasn’t really necessary. For one thing, much of human history has been dominated by short lifespans. Historically, many women died in childbirth in their twenties. The majority of men, until modernity, didn’t make it to fifty. Sitting here musing, I’ve got ten-plus years on that and yet I wonder.
Those facts of life would’ve had to have affected people’s outlooks. Our extreme squeamishness around reproduction also didn’t exist in antiquity. Privacy, as we know it, wasn’t part of their world. How many people see a therapist these days because of sexuality issues? When did this turning point take place? If we go back to early Cro-magnon, perhaps living in caves, did they come back traumatized from the hunt? Surely they must’ve seen death on a nearly daily basis. Today it’s difficult to get anyone to consider the mortuary sciences for a career. We don’t like to think about death. We pick up the phone and dial our therapists.
When I was still teaching I thought often about how differently people framed their lives in the past. It’s only now, however, that I’ve come to wonder about the psychological support we require. I suspect life was, for most people, a literal daily struggle to survive. Agriculture tamed the environment somewhat, and if current evidence is taken into account, religious gathering looks to have developed even in advance of that. Perhaps the larger issues, what we still recognize as religion, helped to cope with the constant uncertainties of life. Unfortunately, there’s no way for us to really get their mental maps. We can read ancient writings, many of them pro forma or religious in nature. We start to get some insight in pieces such as the Gilgamesh Epic, but that is so very brief. I wonder when we started to require help going out the door in the morning or facing another day of the same old, well, you know. Psychology had to evolve but it left so very few traces. I, however, have an advantage in years great enough that I ponder our mental states.
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-Poe
