Montaigne, Trauma, and Reflection

If our social unrest comes from unresolved trauma, how can reflection help?

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

This is Part 18 of an extended, paragraph by paragraph, commentary on Montaigne’s “Of Experience,” an essay that helped to establish the genre of the personal essay. Montaigne and the personal essay show us how to study the self and find ways to lead a full and meaningful life, even how to live authentically in a dangerous world. Each post can be read separately. If, however, you want to read the series in sequence, consult the Table of Contents below, by the thumbnail of Punk Rock Montaigne:

Montaigne's "Of Experience": Table of Contents

Montaigne’s text:

There is no remedy [for the problems with laws]: I am in a position, as Alcibiades was, that, if I had the choice, I will never put myself before any man who has the power to determine my fate. I do not want my honor or life to depend on the skill or diligence of my attorney more than my innocence. I would willingly stand before the kind of law that should reward me for a good deed or punish me for a misdeed. Where I might have as much cause to hope as reason to fear. Indemnity is no sufficient coin for him who does better than not to trespass. [Atkinson and Sices translated this sentence as: “Not being punished is not sufficient reward for a man who does better than not doing wrong.] Our law presents us but one of her hands, and that is her left hand. Whosoever goes before the law will in the end but suffer loss.

[For comparison, see Frame’s translation, p. 999; Atkinson and Sices’ translation, p. 235.]

Commentary:

Montaigne has moved from empathy to anger to parody to acceptance. Although it might not be apparent at first, he has also moved into reflection.

In the personal essay, we find many kinds of reflection. Here, Montaigne is reflecting on an imagined situation. We might compare this to a mind experiment.

Alcibiades (c. 450-404 BCE) was an Athenian general and statesman of great promise. He was mentored by Socrates. After his political opponents charged him with sacrilege, he refused to stand trial and fled to Sparta. Many Athenians considered Alcibiades to be a traitor. By comparing himself to Alcibiades, Montaigne is saying that, given what he knows of the law, he would be inclined to flee rather than submit himself to an unjust legal system.

The puzzling sentence (puzzling in every translation), which is about not being punished for not breaking the law, points to the difference between morality and the law, between leading an ethical life and not being a criminal. Montaigne is refusing to equate the ethical and the legal.

Although it is subtle here, Montaigne follows a pattern that he will often repeat: imagination-reflection-empathy. He imagines that he had to appear in court, that his honor and life would need to be defended by an incompetent lawyer, he reflects on how he would feel in this situation, which helps him to develop empathy for those who appear in court, whether innocent or not.

In 1569 or early 1570, Montaigne fell from his horse, an accident caused by the reckless riding of one of his servants. He was severely injured. In How to Live (2010), this is how Sarah Bakewell describes his processing of the accident:

The connection is not a simple one; he did not sit up in bed and immediately start writing about the accident. He began the Essays a couple of years later, around 1572, and, even then, he wrote other chapters before coming to the one about losing consciousness. When he did turn to it, however, the experience made him try a new kind of writing, barely attempted by other writers: that of re-creating a sequence of sensations as they felt from the inside, following them from instant to instant. (23)

Here, the experience is real, not imagined. The pattern is different: experience-time-reflection. Sometimes, this leads to a transformation. Sometimes, to healing. This is, arguably, the origin of what we now call writing and healing.

Time for our musical interlude. This is Johnny Cash’s brilliant cover of “Hurt,” the Nine-Inch Nails song. Trent Reznor wrote the song while living in the house where Sharon Tate was murdered. So, the song has levels of trauma.

Montaigne lived long before we understood the far-reaching effects of trauma. He did not have talk-therapy or Eye-Movement Therapy. He only had writing.

In an article on Rita Charon’s Stones of Ibarra, Charles Anderson, an authority on writing and healing, also a friend and a former colleague, writes that a healing narrative enables narrators not to fight or flee, but to linger with trauma, process it, and be “as they are, as they were, and, most importantly, as they might become” (“Me Acuerdo,” Literature and Medicine, Fall 2006, p. 361).

What Anderson calls trying out new alternatives, I would describe as reframing. It is not the events that are reframed but the “I” that reflects on the event. The “I” can, as Anderson says, try out many frames, and each frame opens new possibilities for a different kind of life, one that is fuller and more engaged with a community.

In my series titled “Divided America,” I wrote about the seminal studies of the Authoritarian Personality. All of the studies saw a particular family structure as central to this development. Here is my description of this family structure, which serves as a good summary of the research:

The people who form a mob, the people who have an “authoritarian personality,” are born in trauma—into a rigid, hierarchical, and typically abusive family. The children feel they must be perfect to be loved.

The original trauma for most of us is our family of origin, although this is certainly not the only trauma that might leave people vulnerable to charismatic leaders. The trauma of the family is more fundamental because it disrupts a person’s maturation, which means the person does not construct an integrated self and is left with few resources to bring order to a chaotic inner life.

A delicate balance can only be maintained by aligning with an outside force (a strong leader, a cult, a group, a dogma, drugs, alcohol) that brings simplicity to a confusing world or takes us away from our own thoughts to the dogma of a group.

The simple world of dogma divides the world into an “in-group,” which is idealized as the good people, and “out-groups,” which are the bad people.

Reflection is avoided. What the in-group feels intensely—anger, fear, confusion, weakness—is projected onto an out-group. The members of the out-group are portrayed as being so bad that they are feared like a contagion. They might even need to be eradicated. What the in-group feels can be more readily projected—released in an ecstatic ritual—when in a mob that functions like a single mind.

This is, by no means, a deterministic explanation. Many of us, myself included, grew up in families that share some of the characteristics of this paradigm and turn out okay. The pattern can be disrupted by therapy, writing, and reflection. By a mentor. By someone who cares.

The trauma, however, if left to fester, does not allow children to develop into adults. The mannish-boy sees cruelty and political violence as justified—as protection or retribution.

Before settling into a comfortable smugness, muttering, “Yea, those people, they’re the problem, they’re the ones ruining democracy,” we should reflect.

Does the concept of the Authoritarian Personality only explain what is going on in the far-Right, in MAGA world?

Or, does it also explain what is going on in the far-Left, in Woke world?

We are at a point where the extremes on both sides are complaining about the meanness and cruelty of the other side. Each side is stereotyping the other. The far-Right looks at a few comments made by Wokers, eruptions of anger made anonymously online, and then assumes that this is how all “liberals” think. The far-Left does the same. Both sides feel righteous.

This is the real pronoun problem—the separation of Americans into the “we” who are beyond good and the “they” who are beyond evil. This destroys democratic dialogue before it begins.

Each side talks about the nastiness of the other side. They never pause and reflect. They never ask, “What about my behavior? How will my behavior be judged?”

It is a simple move. It can be transformative.