I met one person who claimed to have BPD, and who attributed it to childhood trauma. He had the most acute symptoms of traumatic abuse I have ever observed. For that and other reasons, I consider his report credible.
In particular, he reported getting tortured as a kid while under LSD.
Given his history, I think it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that childhood experiences directly caused BPD.
As I always say, we don’t know the counterfactual, i.e. we don’t know what kind of person he would have turned into the counterfactual world where he hadn’t been abused. Right?
[Usual caveats: I obviously don’t know the details, and I feel awful questioning people’s interpretation of their own lived experience, and child abuse is obviously utterly terrible independent of the question of exactly what effects it causes on psychology and personality much later in life.]
I love your epistemic standard here. Childhood trauma is indeed blamed on many things which aren’t the result of childhood trauma. I believe this particular anecdote is an exception for various reasons (especially the use of LSD).
But the most interesting part of your comment is consideration of the counterfactual. Let’s assume that DID isn’t causing false reports of child trauma. (This is why the report of child abuse must be credible. If false reports of child abuse can be created, then this goes out the window.)
Now consider the priors and posteriors.
I’ve met (within an order of magnitude) 300 people in my life who I know this amount of information on. The prior probability that this person has the highest child trauma is 0.3%. I’ve also met one person who reports DID. If I met one person with DID and DID is uncorrelated with childhood trauma, then the prior odds that that person is also the person with highest child trauma is low, at only 0.3%.
If my prior probability estimate that extreme childhood trauma of this sort causes DID is a mere 10%, then my posterior probability that childhood trauma caused this instance of DID is 97%. In this way, I did consider the counterfactual.
Something useful in isolating the variables here is that DID isn’t going to cause this particular form of child abuse. However, mental illness can confound things by producing false reports of child abuse, a possibility I am ignoring in my calculation. I’m also ignoring common cause.
Of course, this is all from my perspective. From your perspective, my anecdote is contaminated by selection bias. Hearing a story of someone getting robbed is different from getting robbed yourself. Using this metaphor, I’ve been robbed, therefore I consider the crime rate to be high. You, however, have heard a nonrandom person tell a story of someone, somewhere being robbed, which you are right to ignore.
[Content warning: Child abuse.]
I met one person who claimed to have BPD, and who attributed it to childhood trauma. He had the most acute symptoms of traumatic abuse I have ever observed. For that and other reasons, I consider his report credible.
In particular, he reported getting tortured as a kid while under LSD.
Given his history, I think it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that childhood experiences directly caused BPD.
Everything you describe is equally consistent with BPD causing childhood experiences, or BPD causing memories of childhood experiences.
As I always say, we don’t know the counterfactual, i.e. we don’t know what kind of person he would have turned into the counterfactual world where he hadn’t been abused. Right?
[Usual caveats: I obviously don’t know the details, and I feel awful questioning people’s interpretation of their own lived experience, and child abuse is obviously utterly terrible independent of the question of exactly what effects it causes on psychology and personality much later in life.]
I love your epistemic standard here. Childhood trauma is indeed blamed on many things which aren’t the result of childhood trauma. I believe this particular anecdote is an exception for various reasons (especially the use of LSD).
But the most interesting part of your comment is consideration of the counterfactual. Let’s assume that DID isn’t causing false reports of child trauma. (This is why the report of child abuse must be credible. If false reports of child abuse can be created, then this goes out the window.)
Now consider the priors and posteriors.
I’ve met (within an order of magnitude) 300 people in my life who I know this amount of information on. The prior probability that this person has the highest child trauma is 0.3%. I’ve also met one person who reports DID. If I met one person with DID and DID is uncorrelated with childhood trauma, then the prior odds that that person is also the person with highest child trauma is low, at only 0.3%.
If my prior probability estimate that extreme childhood trauma of this sort causes DID is a mere 10%, then my posterior probability that childhood trauma caused this instance of DID is 97%. In this way, I did consider the counterfactual.
Something useful in isolating the variables here is that DID isn’t going to cause this particular form of child abuse. However, mental illness can confound things by producing false reports of child abuse, a possibility I am ignoring in my calculation. I’m also ignoring common cause.
Of course, this is all from my perspective. From your perspective, my anecdote is contaminated by selection bias. Hearing a story of someone getting robbed is different from getting robbed yourself. Using this metaphor, I’ve been robbed, therefore I consider the crime rate to be high. You, however, have heard a nonrandom person tell a story of someone, somewhere being robbed, which you are right to ignore.