Defining Trauma

Newsletter #3

Cutting the Stone by Hieronymous Bosch, c.1494. Image description: An oil painting of four people sat around a table in a garden landscape, one of which is a surgeon cutting a scalpel into the other’s head.

There is a new trend in how trauma is discussed online. A pushback is happening where psychotherapy influencers and writers are discussing the overuse of the word “trauma” in popular culture. An example of this is an article published by Vox in 2022 “How trauma become the word of the decade”, which runs through a brief history of trauma as a label and quotes various experts who question how the term has expanded to encompass upsetting or overwhelming events, pulling away from the catastrophe that marks how trauma has been previously defined. Media psychologist Pamela Rutledge is quoted as saying trauma “has become a popular idiom tossed around without meaning”, akin to saying “I’m depressed” when you are simply upset.