Trauma is Denied

“In Adlerian psychology, trauma is definitively denied. This was a very new and revolutionary point. Certainly, the Freudian view of trauma is fascinating. Freud’s idea is that a person’s psychic wounds (traumas) cause his or her present unhappiness. When you treat a person’s life as a vast narrative, there is an easily understandable causality and sense of dramatic development that creates strong impressions and is extremely attractive. But Adler, in denial of the trauma argument, states the following: “No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences—the so-called trauma—but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.”

The meaning we give to the events of the past is determines our present self. Not the event itself. As noted elsewhere, because we assign the meaning, the meaning can be changed.

Excerpt From: Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga. “The Courage to Be Disliked.” Atria, 2018-05-08. Apple Books.