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Vincent Wells's avatar

I'd say childhood trauma is more something that distorts the emotions, causing changes to personality that are difficult to trace and to resolve. The individual's decision to act in one way or another based on their trauma narrative is secondary. I agree, and it's a widely held view, FKN is a far better psychologist than he is a philosopher. His eternal recurrence is almost cosmology. And when he says things like, 'there's no such thing as cause and effect, only events...' you might choke on your soup! Of course' he's right when he says that, but it doesn't get us anywhere philosophically.

I'd venture to say everyone has some amount of trauma in early childhood, if only because our development takes place in a fully-formed and complex world. The trauma that happens a little later, when we are moving out of infancy into youth and beyond has to be more concrete. Samuel Beckett, 'every day deforms and is forgotten' is another gem!

Well done for caring!

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