My review of a treatise about infanticide

Below, my review published in The Journal of Psychohistory 36, 2 (Fall 2008) of Hardness of Heart, Hardness of Life: The Stain of Human Infanticide by Larry S. Milner

When I first discovered Lloyd deMause’s writings in the internet in February 2006, I was slack-jawed. My first reaction was a healthy skepticism about the most gruesome aspects of childrearing and, like a member of a juror, I decided to listen to both sides of the story. I promptly purchased a copy of Colin Heywood’s 2001 History of Childhood because Heywood, a senior lecturer in economic and social history in the University of Nottingham, is not a psychohistorian. It surprised me that, although Heywood does indeed accept the historicity of the data of abusive childrearing in history, he did not reach the same stance of deMause by condemning the abuse. After reading his book I could not conjecture another reason for this omission but that Heywood simply chose to close his eyes. Thus the first “witness” against psychohistory in our hypothetical trial had, in fact, the opposite effect in my mind: the data that deMause had amassed was right, but an academic did not want to reach the natural conclusion that childrearing methods have been a nightmare throughout history.

There are not many places in the internet to follow a discussion with knowledgeable academics hostile to psychohistory. But I found an active forum in the talk pages of the articles of Wikipedia related to Psychohistory. Again, after editing quite a few Wikipedia articles and engaging in the lively debates this experience strengthened, not weakened, my working hypothesis that the psychohistorical model was sound. Still unconvinced that the model could potentially shift the paradigm in the humanities and social sciences, I decided to read the most scholarly treatise on infanticide to date, Hardness of Heart, Hardness of Life, first published in 1998 and authored by Larry Milner, a physician who currently has a private medical practice in Illinois. Milner’s treatise is certainly a treasure of very valuable sources for the psychohistorian, and his book is certainly the first exhaustive survey of infanticide. Like most readers of this journal, Milner accepts the evidence of the propensity of parents to murder their children, and in his webpage he estimates that the frequency of infanticide indicates that “up to 10-15% of all children ever been born have been killed by their parents: an astounding seven billion victims!”

Far beyond my expectations, after studying closely Milner’s monograph it corroborated, again, the veracity of the information about what deMause has termed “early” and “late” infanticidal modes of childrearing. Nonetheless, Milner’s views on the subject, not the vast information he collected, left me so speechless that I cannot resist the temptation of quoting him extensively. In the first chapter of his treatise, Milner wrote:

If our forefathers had to practice infanticide, it was because of the hardness of their life, rather than the hardness of their heart. It was not anger that led them to strangle or expose their children, it was the only way they could assure that the other members of a family could survive (p. 19).

I could easily rebut this statement, but in Milner’s work there are so many similar, outrageous statements that paradoxically it would be more eloquent simply to let him speak out.

In the chapter on medieval infanticide Milner quotes from a book by Linda Pollock: that children “were often brutally exploited and subjected to indignities now hard to believe.” Pollock might be described as an author who wants to idealize the parents’ behavior. Just like Pollock Milner idealizes the parents adding that “this did not necessarily mean they did not love them” (p. 72). Before the school of thought named cultural relativism appeared in anthropology and history, nineteenth century scholars were more willing to express value judgments on infanticide. For instance, in his chapter on tribal infanticide Milner quotes Brough Smyth’s 1878 study of the Australian aboriginals, a practice that Smyth described as “savage” and the tribes as being in a “half-civilized state.” Milner, following the political correctness of our times, comments that Smyth’s statement “is unfairly colored by our own particular moral judgments and bias” (p. 139). In the next page Milner states that the adults’ needs have priority over the needs of the infant, and he grossly misrepresents deMause’s views on infanticide:

As a result, infanticide may become a necessity when certain stressful conditions, like extreme shortage of food, are met. According to Lloyd deMause, hunter-gatherer tribes are frequently forced into such circumstances, and are thereby “in the infanticidal mode” (p. 140).

It must be noted that Milner seems to be familiar with deMause’s History of Childhood and the first issues of deMause’s journal, which he mentions fairly often. In his study of the diary of Herold, the doctor of the infant Louis XIII, deMause has called our attention about how the infant was invested with massive, paranoid projections from the adults. Quoting Edward Westermarck, Milner projects similar delusions onto the child: “The adults had to resort to the killing of infants ‘as a means of saving their lives’“ (p. 141). In the next page Milner adds: “It was necessary at times to look at the greater good, and not let the birth of an unwanted infant jeopardize the survival of the entire family or tribe” (p. 142). How a tiny newborn could be so phenomenally powerful, Milner does not explain. In the same chapter on tribal infanticide and cannibalism Milner makes this remarkable comment: “The newborn was occasionally sacrificed in order to help save the life of an older sibling” (p. 151), and using language in a way I could only describe as Orwellian Newspeak, he adds: “[Australian] infanticide was never effected by violence, such as a blow or cut, but rather either by exposure, strangling, or burying alive” (p. 152; my emphasis). Milner continues with this misuse of language when writing about Eskimo infanticide. While he concedes that “the baby is killed”, he comments that “this attitude is not cold-hearted”, and here goes the Newspeak: “This empathy [my emphasis]...has resulted in a general understanding that children must be sacrificed before the adult” (p. 167). In the next pages I marked non-empathetic phrases toward the child such as “One advantage of this destruction of females at birth...,” “forced circumstances to destroy them,” and “they have even been forced to eat the children.”

I could easily fill a chapter with these sorts of quotations that appear throughout Milner’s long monograph. But for the sake of brevity I will only add a few more. In the chapter about child sacrifice, Milner states:

If so many diverse cultures thereby found the offering of their offspring beneficial, can we merely pass them off as chaotic, or pathologic, customs? I think not... Somehow we must find a more rational explanation for their behavior (p. 319).

Milner repeats the above sentence almost verbatim in his final chapter, “Conclusion.” What I found most offensive in this concluding chapter were these words by the author while speculating about a possible genetic explanation of infanticide:

Such research must be supported, however, and our beliefs must include the realization that killing may not always be wrong. Quintilian [ca. 35 -100 CE] noted that “to slay a man is often a virtue and to put one’s own children to death is at times the noblest of deeds” (p. 549).

Milner wrote the above sentence on the very last page of his voluminous treatise. The remainder of the book contains a vast bibliography and an index of names and subjects.

What strikes me the most is that Milner agrees with deMause and some historians about the magnitude of infanticide throughout pre-history and history. Milner even quotes anthropologist Laila Williamson as the chosen epigraph at the beginning of his book: “Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule” (p. 1). However, like most anthropologists and orthodox historians who have ventured on writing childhood history, Milner seems emotionally incapable of a proper evaluation of the data he amassed through ten years of research. If Milner is representative of the academic idealization of the parental Holocaust perpetrated since our simian ancestors, it is no surprise that psychohistory has yet to be recognized in the academia.

New Leaves

I am about to embark on a project that extensively quotes for this blog excerpts from two books about the history of the white race. Why?

Those familiar with Fallen Leaves may know that a couple of years ago I parted ways with my former friends: the fans of Alice Miller who claim to side the child during conflicts with their parents. It always bothered me that these people were incapable of honestly discussing my interpretation of psychohistory, which main finding is that non-western cultures treat their children worse than we westerners do. If my former friends truly sided the child, they would make an effort to approach psychohistory either to refute my interpretation of it, or, conversely, to use the findings of psychohistory to expand their worldview.

The do neither. And the question is why.

It is my belief that present-day westerners are plugged in a thought-controlling matrix. It all started right after the Second World War with a barrage of ubiquitous, malicious propaganda directed against Germany. The truth is that, whatever sins the Germans committed during the war, the Allied forces surpassed them in times of peace, from 1945 to 1947 (see e.g., my quotations of Hellstorm).

The same goes with the Jews and their holocaust. When Hitler became chancellor a Jew named Yagoda, the chief of the Soviet Union's intelligence agency, killed more civilians than the later killings attributed to Himmler, and precisely for ethnic reasons. Never before had an entire white nation been ruled mostly by Jewry, and just see what happened in Russia. Hitler and the Nazis merely reacted against such killing.

These historical facts move me to think that Germany continues to be dishonestly demonized by an ongoing, twenty-four hours a day campaign of enumeration of her crimes. Demonized I say because the comparatively larger crimes of the Allies have been hidden from the public view in the soft totalitarian System we are living in.

I call this socio-political scheme a mind-controlling matrix, a prison for the mind. Not only the crimes committed by the Allies are taboo. As an unwritten law, after the Second World War race studies also became forbidden in the mainstream media and the academia—with the exception of the continuing demonization of the Reich and, through intellectual fads of “historical grievances,” even the entire West. And not only the previous, perfectly respectable field of racial studies is now considered beyond the pale. An entire school of charlatanic thought, Boasian anthropology, has become axiomatic in the academia. Presently it is considered heretical to state the obvious: that there are cultures more primitive than others. Just one example: academicians are not even allowed to condemn the Amazonian tribes that still bury their children alive.

For the sake of using a handy word, let us call “liberalism” the religion that the leftist elites have been imposing on us after the Second World War. It is the perspective that comes after this knowledge—the exposé of a new civil religion that has been imposed upon the white psyche—what explains why I have distanced myself from my former friends. Consciously or unconsciously, these people are liberals first and child advocates second. Their true religion is liberalism, not child advocacy. (For a formal definition of the meta-ethical axiom in this secular religion, the “non-discriminatory principle,” see here.) If they prioritized child interests, they would side the children in cases of parental abuse among non-Caucasian immigrants, who, according to the data collected by psychohistory, are more serious abusers than white families.

They do nothing of the sort. The sole mention of “race,” “inferior cultures” or “psycho-classes” freaks them out and shun any frank discussion on the subject.

In other words, the followers of the late Alice Miller are deceiving themselves. Despite claims to the contrary they do not always side the children against their surrounding culture. If you are a Miller fan and believe I am wrong, you are invited to challenge my approach to psychohistory in any of these discussion threads.

I predict, notwithstanding, that this challenge will fall on deaf ears. By experience I know that Miller’s fans are no men of honor. They are too coward, and dishonest, to discuss psychohistory’s most relevant finding: the grim consequences for child interests after the ongoing, massive non-white immigration in their respective countries—at the same time that the peoples of European origin are dwarfing their birthrates!

Following the metaphor I used in “Those who stayed behind,” in the coming entries I will be reproducing excerpts from two historical books for the benefit of the inhabitants of the country N, not of those left behind in country M, still trapped in the matrix of political correctness.

Pinocchio (2)

I have moved this entry here: http://chechar.wordpress.com/2013/08/16/pinocchio-2/

Pinocchio (1)

I have moved this post here: http://chechar.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/pinocchio-1/

Eumolpus’ tale from Petronius’ Satyricon

“When I went to Asia,” Eumolpus began, “as a paid officer in the Quaestor’s suite, I lodged with a family at Pergamus. I found my quarters very pleasant, first on account of the convenience and elegance of the apartments, and still more so because of the beauty of my host’s son. I devised the following method to prevent the master of the house entertaining any suspicions of me as a seducer. Whenever the conversation at table turned on the seduction of handsome boys, I showed such extreme indignation and protested with such an air of austerity and offended dignity against the violence done to my ears by filthy talk of the sort, that I came to be regarded, especially by the mother, as one of the greatest of moralists and philosophers. Before long I was allowed to take the lad to the gymnasium; it was I that directed his studies, I that guided his conduct, and guarded against any possible debaucher of his person being admitted to the house.

“It happened on one occasion that we were sleeping in the dining-hall, the school having closed early as it was a holiday, and our amusements having rendered us too lazy to retire to our sleeping-chambers. Somewhere about midnight I noticed that the lad was awake; so whispering soft and low, I murmured a timid prayer in these words, ‘Lady Venus, if I may kiss this boy, so that he know it not, tomorrow I will present him with a pair of doves.’ Hearing the price offered for the gratification, the boy set up a snore. So approaching him, where he lay still making pretense to be asleep, I stole two or three flying kisses. Satisfied with this beginning, I rose betimes next morning, and discharged my vow by bringing the eager lad a choice and costly pair of doves.

“The following night, the same opportunity occurring, I changed my petition, ‘If I may pass a naughty hand over this boy, and he not feel it, I will present him for his complaisance with a brace of the best fighting cocks ever seen.’ At this promise the child came nestling up to me of his own accord and was actually afraid, I think, lest I might drop asleep again. I soon quieted his uneasiness on this point, and amply satisfied my longings, short of the supreme bliss, on every part of his beautiful body. Then when daylight came, I made him happy with the gift I had promised him.

“As soon as the third night left me free to try again, I rose as before, and creeping up to the rascal, who was lying awake expecting me, whispered at his ear, ‘If only, ye Immortal Gods, I may win of this sleeping darling full and happy satisfaction of my love, for such bliss I will tomorrow present the lad with an Asturian of the Macedonian strain [a horse], the best to be had for money, but always on the condition he shall not feel my violence.’ Never did the stripling sleep more sound. So first I handled his plump and snowy bosoms, then kissed him on the mouth, and finally concentrated all my ardors in one supreme delight. Next morning he sat still in his room, expecting my present as usual. Well! you know as well as I do, it is a much easier matter to buy doves and fighting cocks than an Asturian; besides which, I was afraid so valuable a present might rouse suspicion as to the real motives of my liberality. After walking about for an hour or so, I returned to the house, and gave the boy a kiss—and nothing else. He looked about inquiringly, then threw his arms round my neck, and ‘Please, sir!’ he said, ‘where is my Asturian?’

“‘It is hard,’ I replied, ‘to get one fine enough. You will have to wait a few days for me to fulfill my vow.’

“The boy had wits enough to see through my answer, and his resentment was betrayed by the angry look that crossed his face.

“Although by this breach of faith I had closed against myself the door of access so carefully contrived, I returned once more to the attack. For, after allowing a few days to elapse, one night when similar circumstances had created just another opportunity for us as before, I began, the moment I heard the father snoring, to beg and pray the boy to be friends with me again —that is, to let me give him pleasure for pleasure, adding all the arguments my burning concupiscence could suggest. But he was positively angry and refused to say one word beyond, ‘Go to sleep, or I will tell my father.’ But there is never an obstacle so difficult audacity will not vanquish it. He was still repeating, ‘I will wake my father,’ when I slipped into his bed and took my pleasure of him in spite of his half-hearted resistance. However, he found a certain pleasure in my naughty ways, for after a long string of complaints about my having cheated and cajoled him and made him the laughing-stock of his school-fellows, to whom he had boasted of his rich friend, he whispered, ‘Still I won’t be so unkind as you; if you like, do it again.’

“So forgetting all our differences, I was reconciled to the dear lad once more, and after utilizing his kind permission, I slipped off to sleep in his arms. But the stripling was not satisfied with only one repetition, all ripe for love as he was and just at the time of life for passive enjoyment. So he woke me up from my slumbers, and, ‘Anything you’d like, eh?’ said he. Nor was I, so far, indisposed to accept his offer. So working him the best ever I could, to the accompaniment of much panting and perspiration, I gave him what he wanted, and then dropped asleep again, worn out with pleasure. Less than an hour had passed before he started pinching me and asking, ‘Eh! why are we not at work?’ Hereupon, sick to death of being so often disturbed, I flew into a regular rage, and retorted his own words upon him; ‘Go to sleep,’ I cried, ‘or I’ll tell your father!’”

Solzhenitsyn

Quoted in my last post of the West's Darkest Hour:

Prison causes the profound rebirth of a human being… profound pondering over his own “I”… Here all the trivia and fuss have decreased. I have experienced a turning point. Here you harken to that voice deep inside you, which amid the surfeit and vanity used to be stifled by the roar from outside… Your soul, which formerly was dry, now ripens from suffering…

A class with Colin Ross

Psychiatrist Colin Ross



A section from my book:

What causes mental disorders? The best text I have read on this subject appears in the book The Trauma Model by Colin Ross, whom I introduced already in my second book of Hojas Susurrantes when discussing the unfortunate life of David Helfgott (see e.g., the Academy Award-winning film Shine).



The problem of attachment to the perpetrator

Attachment theory, originally developed by John Bowlby, is one of the most fruitful platforms to explain human psychological development. Evolution always chooses its available mechanisms for its use, and since every living creature has the imperative to survive, hominids developed an unconscious structure to maintain the illusion of parental love even when there really is none.

Perhaps the most accessible way to visualize attachment is through a modern fairy tale: Steven Spielberg’s film Artificial Intelligence. I’m referring to the scenes in which Henry warns Monica not to imprint their adoptive son David with the program of affective attachment if Monica is not completely sure that she will want to reciprocate the love that David would profess, since the program is irreversible (“The robot child’s love would be sealed—in a sense hardwired—and we’d be part of him forever”). After some days Monica nonetheless reads to David the seven magic words that imprint him (“What were those words for, Mommy?”).

The platform which Ross is standing on in order to understand mental disorders is what he calls “the problem of attachment to the perpetrator”:

I defined the problem, in the mid-1990s, in the context of the false memory war.

In order to defend myself against the attacks by hostile colleagues, I sought solid ground on which to build fortifications. It seemed like the theory of evolution offered a good starting point. What is the basic goal of all organisms according to the theory of evolution? To survive and reproduce. This is true from amoeba on up to mammals. Who will dispute that all organisms want to survive and replicate? This seemed like safe ground.

Dragonflies, grasshoppers, salamanders and alligators do not have families. They do not send cards on Mother’s Day. Things are different if you are a bird or mammal. Birds and mammals are absolutely dependent on adult caretakers for their survival for a period after birth, which ranges from weeks to decades depending on the species. For human parents, it seems like the period of dependency lasts over thirty years. In some species, if the nursing mother dies, the child dies. But in others, including elephants, if the nursing mother dies, a female relative takes over the care of the young one, and the child survives. In elephants there is a built-in Child Protective Services, and there is a sociology of attachment.

Attachment is like the migration of birds. It is built in, deep in our brain stems and DNA. The infant bird or mammal does not engage in a cognitive, analytical process to assess the cost-benefit of attachment. It just happens. It’s biology. The fundamental developmental task of the human infant is attachment. You will and you must attach. This is true at all levels of the organism. You must attach in order to survive biologically, but also in order to thrive and grow at emotional, intellectual, interpersonal and at all possible levels.

We know the consequences of failure to attach from several sources. The first is the third world orphanage. Orphan babies may have an adequate intake of protein, carbohydrate and fat, and may have their diapers changed regularly, but if they are starved for love, stimulation, attention, and affection, they are damaged developmentally. Their growth is stunted at all levels, including basic pediatric developmental norms.

Ross goes on to explain the body of scientific evidence about the effects of abuse in the offspring of primates: “The Harlow monkey experiments, for instance, are systematic studies of abuse and neglect. Little monkeys cling desperately to their unresponsive wire-and-cloth mothers because they are trying to solve the problem of attachment to the perpetrator, in this case the perpetrator of neglect.” He also mentions experimental evidence that profound neglect and sensory isolation during early infancy physically damage the brain in a measurable way: “The mammal raised in such an environment has fewer dendritic connections between the nerve cells in its brain than the mammal which grew up in a ‘culturally rich’ environment.” It is in this context that Ross states that it is developmental suicide to fail to attach, and “at all costs and under the highest imperative, the young mammal must attach.” He then writes:

In a sense, we all have the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. None of us have absolutely secure attachment. We all hate our parents for some reason, but love them at the same time. This is the normal human condition. But there is a large group of children who have the problem of attachment to the perpetrator to a huge degree. They have it to such a large degree, it is really a qualitatively different problem, I think. These are the children in chronic trauma families. The trauma is a variable mix of emotional, verbal, physical and sexual abuse.

The locus of control shift

For psychiatrists Theodore Lidz, Silvano Arieti and, in a less systematic way, Loren Mosher, in schizophrenogenic families not only one but both parents failed terribly. If the problem of attachment to the perpetrator is a cornerstone for the trauma model of mental disorders, there is yet another stone. Though the number one imperative for birds (and in previous times, the dinosaurs) and mammals is to attach, in abusive families the child makes use of another built-in reflex: to recoil from pain. Ross explains what he calls “The locus of control shift” (in psychology, “locus of control” is known jargon).

The scientific foundation of the locus of control shift is Piaget and developmental psychology. We know several things about the cognition of children age two to seven. I summarize this as “kids think like kids.” Young children are self-centered. They are at the center of the world, and everything revolves around them. They cause everything in the world [“locus shift”] and they do so through magical causality. They do not use rational, analytical, adult cognitive strategies and vocabulary.

Imagine a relatively normal family with a four year-old daughter. One day, the parents decide to split up and dad moves out. What is true for this little girl? She is sad. Using normal childhood cognition, the little girl constructs a theory to explain her field observation: “Daddy doesn’t live here anymore because I didn’t keep my bedroom tidy”.

This is really a dumb theory. It is wrong, incorrect, inaccurate, mistaken and preposterous. This is how normal kids think. But there is more to it than that. The little girl thinks to herself, “I’m OK. I’m not powerless. I’m in charge. I’m in control. And I have hope for the future. Why? Because I have a plan. All I have to do is to tidy up my bedroom and daddy will move back in. I feel OK now”.

The little girl has shifted the locus of control from inside her parents, where it really is, to inside herself. She has thereby created an illusion of power, control and mastery which is developmentally protective [of the attachment].

Ross explains that this is normal and happens in many non-abusive, though dysfunctional, families. He then explains what happens in extremely abusive families:

Now consider another four year-old girl living in a major trauma family. She has the problem of attachment to the perpetrator big time. What is true of this little girl?

This other girl is powerless, helpless, trapped, and overwhelmed. She can’t stop the abuse, she can’t escape it, and she can’t predict it. She is trapped in her family societal denial, her age, threats, physical violence, family rules and double binds. How does the little girl cope? She shifts the locus of control.

The child says to herself, “I’m not powerless, helpless and overwhelmed. I’m in charge here. I’m making the abuse happen. The reason I’m abused is because I’m bad. How do I know this is true? Because only a bad little girl would be abused by her parents.”

A delicious exemplification of the locus of control shift in the film A.I. is the dialogue that David has with his Teddy bear. After Monica abandoned him in the forest David tells his little friend that the situation is under control. He only has to find the Blue Fairy so that she may turn him into a real boy and his mom will love him again…

In contrast to fairy tales, in the real world instances of the locus of control shift are sordid. In incest victims, the ideation that everything is the fault of the girl herself is all too frequent. I cannot forget the account of a woman who told her therapist that, when she was a girl, she took baths immediately after her father used her sexually. The girl felt that since she, not her father was the dirty one and that her body was the dirty factor that aroused the father’s appetite, she had to “fix” her body.

But there are far more serious cases, even, than sexual abuse. According to Ross, in near-psychotic families:

The locus of control shift is like an evil transfusion. All the evil inside the perpetrator has been transfused into the self, making the perpetrator good and safe to attach to. The locus of control shift helps to solve the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. The two are intertwined with each other.

Although Silvano Arieti made similar pronouncements half a century before, these two principles as elaborated by Ross are the true cornerstones to understand the edifice of this work [Hojas Susurrantes]. As I mentioned in my second book, when I visited the clinic of Ross in Dallas as an observer, I had the opportunity to observe the therapies of some adult women. I remember a lady in particular who said that if her husband hit her it may be because she, not her husband, behaved naughtily.

In his book Ross mentions cases of already grown daughters, now patients of his psychiatric clinic, who harm themselves. These self-harmers in real life exemplify the paradigm of the girl mentioned by Ross: Evil has been transfused to the mind of the victim, who hurts herself because she believes she is wicked. In my previous book I said that in the film The Piano Teacher a mother totally absorbs the life of her daughter, who in turn redirects the hate she feels toward her mother by cutting herself in the genital area until bleeding profusely: a practice that, as we will see in the next section, is identical to the pre-Hispanic sacrificial practice of spilling the blood of one’s own genitals.

In his brief class Ross showed us why, however abusive our parents, a Stockholm syndrome elevated to the nth degree makes us see our parents as good attachment objects. The little child is like a plant that cannot but unfold towards the sun to survive. Since even after marriage and independence the adult child very rarely reverts in her psyche the locus of control shift to the original source, she remains psychically disturbed.

For Lloyd deMause, this kind of super-Stockholm syndrome is the major flaw of the human mind, the curse of Homo sapiens that produces an alter ego in which all of the malignancy of the perpetrator has been transfused to the ego of the victim. In a divided self this entity strives for either (1) substituting, through the locus of control shift, the unconscious anger felt towards the parents onto herself with self-harming, addictions, anorexia or other sorts of self-destructive behavior, and/or (2) harming the next generation of children. In any case the cause of this process is the total incapability of judging and processing inside ourselves the behavior of the parent: the problem of attachment to the perpetrator.

As I said above, I believe that Ross' class is the corner stone to understand the trauma model of mental disorders.