When I was a teenager (80s), I was subject to a lot of scare propaganda, mostly about sex and drugs. There was one book where an almost-14 y/o girl was forbidden by her parents to date a 17 y/o boy, and what really made her father apoplectic was the idea that “I don’t want you to end up sixteen years old and all used up. Wasted.” Another was a book about a girl the same age who ran away at 14, was picked up by a pimp, and after three months of prostituting herself, went back home thinking, “Well, I’ll go through the motions, but my life is over and I know it.”
IRL, I know people who’ve been abused, sexually and otherwise, had loved ones die, saw loved ones die, had drug or alcohol problems at a young age, and lived through other traumatic events. I have my scars too (don’t want to go into it; I’m trying not to dwell any more), but that’s just it: they’re scars. I’m not a shell of a human being because these things happened to me, and neither are the other people I know.
So how much does it take to render a person “used up”, or a life “ruined” or “over”? Or does anything? Is it true that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, or is it true that too many “little deaths” (no, I don’t mean orgasms) kill a soul?
When you consider what people in gulags and concentration camps go/went through, I can see how life is over for them. It would probably be impossible to come to grips with what happens in a slave labor camp.
As far as ‘how much’, that is variable from person to person based on their own outlook and genetic predisposition to being able to handle things. Some people handle it, some do not. Viktor Frankl wrote a theory before the holocaust about finding meaning in suffering but he said it helped him survive the holocaust and afterwards. He also said that there were some religious fanatics among the inmates, so some people would turn to religion to handle the situation.
Wesley, I’m glad to see that young people are still reading Viktor Frankl. I also thought of him as I read the OP.
There is a series of books written by a man who was extremely abused and even tortured as a child. I believe the series starts with A Boy Named Dave. (Someone correct me if I’m mistaken.) That man has not only survived, he has prevailed, as Faulkner said.
There are certain things that you can do that will make changes in your brain that might be impossible to overcome. And relationships change over time, depending on what has transpired. But I am a firm believer in the ability to remake ourselves and to choose new directions.
Like most everything else, it varies- there are people who go to pieces over any trivial slight, and there are people who have endured utter hell from childhood on who grow to be stable decent productive people.
Take the cite for what it’s worth. One History Channel show reported that in WWII the Army used somewhere around 250 as the maximum total combat days before mental breakdown occurred.
I don’t know. My mother in law was in Auschwitz; then she had to smuggle and bootleg to stay alive for a while. She seems to be doing okay.
Obviously, it varies from person to person how much they can take before they crack. Factors such as mental illness also come into play, as well as the degree of support they receive from others, be it during or after the bad times.
Thats good, hopefully alot of people pulled through and are more or less fine. But from the documentaries i’ve seen on Japanese camps I don’t see how those people managed to pull their lives back together after those events. Virtually every pain and terror that was possible happened there, but people could also be at their most nurturing in those environments too. People were being beaten and tortured while looking out for their friends and considered that a way of life. Its odd in a way, I know that bad situations can bring out the worst in people wwho are under them but it also seems to be able to bring out the best too.