Talk:Appeal to trauma
Psycho-dynamic dogma[edit]
Good topic, though the term "appeal to trauma" appears very little used. @Carthage Where did you see it used, or are you coining it?
Anyway, this reminds me of what I read in works by George K. Simon, a psychologist who specializes in manipulative behavior. He describes how there was an entrenched dogma rooted in Freudian thought, according to which no one ever wants to do "evil" (i.e. hurtful, harmful things) deep down inside, and absolutely all bad behavior is due to some trauma, which if not known must be "uncovered" through psychoanalysis -- or sometimes can be rid of by simply trying to boost the self-esteem of the perpetrator. In the US at any rate, Simon relates how it was only with the cognitive and behavioral paradigm gaining force in the 1990s that this old dogma came to really be questioned in the world of mental health professionals trying to counsel or act as therapists, though he still encounters those faithful to the old dogma.
An anecdote which I think is from an earlier book by Simon, is about one time Simon presented his ideas and a staunch psycho-dynamics proponent in the audience disagreed on the existence of real ill will. While that wasn't rare, at one time there was a disagreement on why cats torture mice. Is it that cats do it because they like it (a predatory drive and thrill), or are the cats actually afraid of mice deep down, and neurotically acting out in anger out of insecurity, perhaps having been traumatized by mice in their kitten childhood? The Freudian suggested that you could in principle view it in the latter way even with cats.
In his later book Character Disturbance, Simon divides people with problems into two largely quite opposite groups: the neurotic, who care too much, over-learn from negative experiences, may have developed trauma, and mainly trouble themselves; and usually by contrast (there's some overlap) the character-disturbed, who care too little, under-learn from negative experience, seldom are deeply troubled by anything, and mainly trouble others. They usually need very different help. The former need acceptance, help in understanding themselves better, etc. The latter need correction and a push to develop any real principles, with the incentive of better options for life ahead, and they already have more self-esteem than most people (but not any deeper self-respect based on idealism and a personal track record). The neurotic may act out as a result of being hurt and confused. The character-disturbed just feel entitled to do what they feel like, and may cynically feign that they're hurt and need understanding because they know it's a cultural cliche and often an easy way to manipulate their way into sympathy and out of responsibility. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 22:15, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
Another way to look at this, and it's maybe a bit broader than an "appeal to trauma", is the nature of psychological "compensation theories". While such theories may sometimes turn out true, just like conspiracy theories occasionally do, most of the time they are an escape from reality, a little like conspiracy theories are, but with the difference that they try to explain away the existence of all evil instead of explain everything in terms of an evil conspiracy. (Though I once read a conspiracy theorist who seemed to believe that both were fully universal truths at the same time). --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 22:19, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
- I am coining it. I don't think I've ever seen it used outside of this draft before. And thank you. Feel free to contribute to this draft BTW. The only draft of mine that I am exclusively editing right now is the Melville Dewey one. Carthage (talk) 22:21, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
- You can find the phrase used here in 2022[1] and here in 2000.[2] The latter article can be accessed on Jstor by creating a free account. Bongolian (talk) 08:24, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
- Carthage added those as references, but the text didn't reflect their contents. I changed that, writing more. The first one is an American conservative cultural commentary that's actually sober and read-worthy, mentioning woo and excesses on the left, while the second one is a psychoanalytic work that (when weird jargon and text style is moved past) mentions how reactionary groups including MRAs reach for trauma to legitimize themselves and shift sympathy away from those who've recently gained it in part on account of their trauma. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 01:19, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
- You can find the phrase used here in 2022[1] and here in 2000.[2] The latter article can be accessed on Jstor by creating a free account. Bongolian (talk) 08:24, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Four term fallacy[edit]
Would this qualify as a four-term fallacy? I think there's an implicit third premise in there somewhere, but I'm experiencing too much brain fog right now to identify it. Carthage (talk) 03:45, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
- I haven't quite formalized it yet, but here was my draft for a lede. I didn't save it yet because there was an edit conflict, and then I became unsure whether it fits your concept after reading the new. I think first we must get clear about what the basic concept is.
The appeal to trauma is an informal fallacy where actions are rationalized ex post facto by citing past abuse or traumas, real or not, experienced by the person or party in question. It can involve denying the possibility of other motivations, or even the making of deliberate choices – in effect saying that whoever did whatever simply couldn't help it and was driven by the trauma or feelings arising from it. While it is possible for people to react and act blindly as a result of strongly conditioning emotional experiences, such a cause is often wrongly attributed, either manipulatively in order to explain away more unsavory behavior, or naively by people who hold doctrinaire views and regard baser motivations as impossible in healthy individuals.
Entirely depending on the system of ethics or type of morality under consideration, it may or may not be acceptable to strike back under any circumstances, for example according to the Old Testament rule of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". It is not in itself a fallacy to consider revenge justified. This is separate from the nature of attempts to circumvent unfavorable moral reasoning, which threatens to conclude that something is unjustified in the eyes of society, by being deceitful about motivations – and likewise separate from the nature of "naive" thinking which arrives at the same result due to false beliefs about the nature of human behavior.
- What you added so far maybe points in a somewhat different direction. Are you including attempts to hand-wave away laws by saying "circumstances were so bad that anything was justified"? That would simply seem like an appeal to emotion. Anyway, that's one of the things your examples bring to mind, but not necessarily all. By contrast, what I had in mind only fits international politics so directly if you have people reasoning by analogy and truly treating nations, governments, or organizations as if they had the psyches of individual humans. Sometimes that's done, but far from always, so it would need to be stated if it's the case. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 04:39, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
- @ApooftGnegiol I was thinking about the battered woman syndrome when I first came up with the idea, but it can equally fit international relations I think. People tend to subconsciously think of nation states as individual entities, so it's a psychological fallacy too. I added "person or group" to make it clear that the fallacy can be used to justify the actions of both individual parties and collectives, if that makes sense. I think we could add that the appeal to trauma can be generalized to apply to collectives of people, but can also be used to justify individual acts. I'm not a formal logician, however, so feel free to correct me on anything. Carthage (talk) 04:46, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
No Fallacy Here, Just Victim Diminishment[edit]
I think this whole article is bogus. What exactly is the fallacy? That trauma can effect behavior? It is fallacious that trauma, being a particularly bad experience firmly imprinted in memory, should have no effect on behavior, unlike every other kind of experience? Or does experience have no effect on future behavior? Is there no continuity between experience, disposition, and in turn, behavior? Are we just automatons moving randomly from one place to another? The science of Behaviorism would suggest otherwise. Operant conditioning? Hello? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?? This article claims that the fallacy is Special Pleading. Uh, NO. Special Pleading means, " an argument in which the speaker deliberately ignores aspects that are unfavorable to their point of view." Appeal to Trauma has NOTHING TO DO WITH SPECIAL PLEADING! What aspects that are unfavorable have been ignored? That Appeal to Trauma is a fallacy, now THAT'S special pleading! This article's #2 footnote is a commentary that consists of one person's opinion about 'trauma' being a trendy topic. Just because a lot of people are talking about trauma influencing behavior doesn't make it fallacious. A lot of people are talking about gender issues and autism these days, does that make them more likely to be fallacious? The footnote in this Appeal to Trauma article specifically refers to epigenetics, which the commentary article the footnote leads to falsely claims has its 'provenance' in Lamarckian pseudo-science. That's the basis of the 'pseudo-science' claim in this Appeal to Trauma article, that's the sentiment the footnote is attached to. Just because people might attribute a certain behavior to trauma that might not have arisen due to trauma wouldn't mean a fallacy has been invoked, it would simply be a false attribution, commonly known as 'being wrong about something (in particular)'.
In conclusion, this article is nothing more than a right-wing eyeroll at more of that 'snowflake stuff'. Can people blame negative things on trauma that maybe don't follow a chain of causation? Sure, but people can blame things on anything, like their cousin, or the weather, or being in a lousy mood. Do we need Appeal to Cousin, Appeal to Cloud, and Appeal to Bitchiness articles? We can appeal to anything, but what makes an appeal an informal fallacy is a logical error, a non-sequitur, meaning 'does not follow' does it follow that an experience may influence behavior? Yes, it does. No fallacy, kill the article.2A0E:4005:1002:FFFF:185:40:4:100 (talk) 13:10, 26 September 2025 (UTC)
- Where is "special pleading" mentioned? The term is not in the article text. Given how you emphasize the wrongness of something that doesn't exist in the article, I wonder if your complaint is written by ChatGPT or similar. Some of the style suggests it too.
- On the minor point about pseudoscience. It's wrong to claim that a denial of the validity of epigenetics is the basis for viewing some explanations as pseudoscientific. An article used as a source is a commentary of sorts which is kind of sloppy in explaining science, though that's outside the considerations of using it. I'd rather say that pseudoscience appears in how concepts like epigenetics are stretched and applied with leaps of assumption.
- Finally, I suppose some people may dismiss this article as "right-wing" if that's their standard, though I'm sure at least 2 (probably 3) writers view themselves as plainly left-wing. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 23:01, 26 September 2025 (UTC)
- I apologize for the 'special pleading' argument, I thought it claimed special pleading, but I now see that it doesn't. Your claim that my post was written by CHAT-GPT looks to me like grasping for straws because you supported this pile of crap article. My claim regarding epigenetics is not that epigenetics was called pseudoscience, it is that the article makes the pseudo-science claim of Appeal to Trauma based on a footnote that leads to a commentary in which epigenetics is called pseudoscience because it's 'provenance' is Lamarckian pseudoscience. Epigenetics has nothing to do with Lamarckian genetic theories, so claiming that Appeal to Trauma is based on pseudo-science by claiming that it's based on epigenetics being a component of Lamarckian pseudo-science is false. And finally, it really doesn't matter if contributors of the article consider themselves to be left-wing, blitz-wing or chicken-wing. It's not as if people contributing to the article are immune from being ignorant tools. The article is victim blaming BS. I'm sorry you thought it was cool. You tell me why an Appeal to Trauma article is needed while an Appeal to Toenail Fungus article isn't? 2A0E:97C0:3E3:460:1337:B01B:1337:2 (talk) 10:17, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- The verbose rhetorical style, with the typical flow, little substance, plus a blatant inaccuracy in the previous post, is why it plainly looks like chatbot slop (probably with your own words added here and there). The apology here also could be typical chatbot-backpedaling. Anyway, to make this short, I'll address this fully once and then not accept any more slop comments.
- The article referenced from ours having a sloppy phrasing on the history of epigenetics is irrelevant; as already mentioned, it's not the basis for what our own article concludes. (Epigenetics superficially resembles older Lamarckian ideas, and is sometimes called Lamarckian, but isn't pseudoscience, but this is besides our point, as mentioned.)
- Obviously we consider "appeal to trauma" much bigger a thing than your "appeal to toenail fungus", hence making this article, but you are free to propose other articles on informal fallacies if you actually have some good idea (that others find worth covering).
- I think it hurts the understanding of trauma, and the causes of those who suffer it, when liars and manipulators feign it or use it to justify whatever they like, which bullies sometimes do (while their victims suffer genuine trauma), and which sometimes happens in court (or in even more dubious framing, in politics like with Israel and Palestine). But you knew our reasoning already if you read the rest of this talk page.
- Finally, this article is actually still a bit rough and sloppy in my view, yet of value and could be improved further. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 21:10, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- I appreciate your response but I've decided to take a full dive into deconstructing the article...
- The verbose rhetorical style, with the typical flow, little substance, plus a blatant inaccuracy in the previous post, is why it plainly looks like chatbot slop (probably with your own words added here and there). The apology here also could be typical chatbot-backpedaling. Anyway, to make this short, I'll address this fully once and then not accept any more slop comments.
- I apologize for the 'special pleading' argument, I thought it claimed special pleading, but I now see that it doesn't. Your claim that my post was written by CHAT-GPT looks to me like grasping for straws because you supported this pile of crap article. My claim regarding epigenetics is not that epigenetics was called pseudoscience, it is that the article makes the pseudo-science claim of Appeal to Trauma based on a footnote that leads to a commentary in which epigenetics is called pseudoscience because it's 'provenance' is Lamarckian pseudoscience. Epigenetics has nothing to do with Lamarckian genetic theories, so claiming that Appeal to Trauma is based on pseudo-science by claiming that it's based on epigenetics being a component of Lamarckian pseudo-science is false. And finally, it really doesn't matter if contributors of the article consider themselves to be left-wing, blitz-wing or chicken-wing. It's not as if people contributing to the article are immune from being ignorant tools. The article is victim blaming BS. I'm sorry you thought it was cool. You tell me why an Appeal to Trauma article is needed while an Appeal to Toenail Fungus article isn't? 2A0E:97C0:3E3:460:1337:B01B:1337:2 (talk) 10:17, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- The article begins with the following description of the fallacy:
- "The appeal to trauma is an informal logical fallacy and rhetorical tool used to justify the actions of someone or some group ex post facto by citing past abuse or traumas, real or not, experienced by the person or group in question."
- This seems straightforward enough, though problematic, but I'll get to that later. The article goes on to expand the definition to include:
- "A variant of this argument... seeks to account for why behavior happened, which is then said to be explained by trauma."
- So now not only does the Appeal to Trauma apply to justification of actions but also to the explanation of actions. The article goes on to explain one reason that the justification or explanation of an action due to trauma incurred by the entity performing the action is unsavory is because,
- "...such cynical "trauma ploys" cheapen the meaning of trauma and thereby hurt the causes of the genuinely traumatized."
- If that's the case, that there are in fact people who are genuinely traumatized, the fallacy forbids them from suggesting or even speculating that said trauma could have any affect on their subsequent behavior. After all, the fallacy has no way of determining whose trauma is genuine and whose is not. Luckily, there is a single line in this article which states that the 'explanatory' version of the Appeal to Trauma fallacy:
- "may not be fallacious depending on the specifics, but is often tied to an overly simplistic view of human behavior."
- Well that's good news, the truly traumatized should be given the benefit of the doubt then, right? Apparently not, the words 'overly simplistic view of human behavior' are tied to a link to RW's Pseudopsychology article. Does that imply that when trauma is very commonly broached in settings pertaining to actual psychology, such as psychotherapy, it's not done in an overly simplistic way? Gee, I hope so. At least the article admits in this one line that 'appealing' to trauma may not be fallacious, but it's presented as if that is the exception to the norm.
- Continuing, the article states:
- " It also makes the "power" of trauma in persuasion and the soliciting of support an object of envy at times. Sometimes, the "other side" – whether in terms of the perpetrator of trauma, or simply a more general side of a culture war or perhaps an international dispute – will strive to cast itself as the "true" or greater trauma survivor for that reason."
- Rather than pointing out that what's being referred to is a false equivalency, the article seems to be suggesting that entities that have inflicted trauma on other entities have an equal (equally fallacious) claim to trauma as the entities they have victimized, evoking the old parental platitude when delivering corporal punishment to a child; "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you".
- The article revisits this sentiment at the end of the next paragraph:
- "Meanwhile, the conservative backlash against "woke" and social justice paints other groups as the real victims and survivors, and as those silenced by oppressors."
- Again, the article fails to point out that such claims are in no way equal. If there is to be any fallacy to the Appeal to Trauma, surely it would be applied to the oppressors, rather than the oppressed, right? Or even to the callous, who might claim to be 'traumatized' by seeing so many homeless people in poor shape living rough on the streets? Nope, even that kind of insidious claim isn't fallacious, it's simply false.
- The article hits Critical Cringe with this statement:
- "Others may also opportunistically play the trauma card. "
- This, of course, is an ill-advised version of 'playing the race card'. Using this dogwhistle of an expression should be cause for anyone with a rudimentary understanding of race-baiting to pause to ponder the true intentions of the author.
- Tellingly, when the article shows the form of the fallacy, it describes an account whereby an entity, known as 'X', justifying an action, known as 'Y', because of a traumatic event that Entity X experienced first hand, known as 'W'. This is worth noting because most 'Appeal to...' fallacies are described using third parties. For example, the Appeal to Trauma form would go like this: Person X justifies Action Y undertaken by Entity Z because Entity Z experienced Traumatic Event W. In third-party form, Person X acts a defender of Entity Z. That the author of this article made the unusual choice describe the form using first person, presumably being aware that 'blaming the victim' would be a valid concern and appearance to avoid in constructing this article, suggests that the author was, at best, incredibly tone deaf or at worst, projecting true intentions.
- Moving on, in the Examples section, which includes In Politics and In the Bible subsections, almost all of the examples shoehorn trauma as the justification, rather than the more obvious, 'revenge'. In the bible, 'an eye for an eye', the treatment of which comprises as substantial portion of the entire article, has nothing to do with trauma, it has to do with 'evening the score'.
- Now, back to the initial problem I mentioned; that trauma is in fact explanatory to behavior, and may even be a valid justification. Because we're talking about opinions, we can't say that a fallacy has been invoked unless the trauma is not traumatic. False trauma isn't fallacious, it's just a false claim, as in the so-called trauma of the parent giving the spanking, the middle-class person who has to see homeless people, or the white nationalist who claims to be traumatized by having to interact with cashiers or clerks with 'foreign' accents. Judging by the vast difference in the amount of text this article devotes to focusing on invalidating victims of actual trauma compared to the brief mentions of those making bogus claims of traumatization, and even going so far as to equate the two when it does mention them, the agenda being promoted by this article is, if not intentional, then highly problematic by... accident, I guess?
- Much of the sentiment of this article is already covered by the long-established Appeal to Pity. But by moving from a concept, 'pity', to a descriptor of actual and often physical harm, 'trauma', the article makes a leap into the territory of victim blaming. Using the same logic, we could make a claim that a destitute person shoplifting their only meal in several days, invokes Appeal to No Money as a justification for stealing the food. Or perhaps the fallacy would be said to be 'Appeal to Starving'. And remember, according to this article these fallacies wouldn't only apply to justification, but also explanation. In other words, even if no claim of being justified in stealing food were made, it would be fallacious for a starving person to claim that they stole food to stave off starvation. And as for justification, would a starving person even need to justify the moral implications of stealing food? I certainly hope that such a person would not choose to starve to death rather than partake in the moral crime of making a so-called fallacious argument!
- In conclusion, a traumatized entity's Appeal to Trauma is not fallacious, just as a starving entity's Appeal to Starvation is not fallacious. In any online discussion of the merits of giving 'spare change' to beggars on the street, one will invariably encounter an argument in which someone claims they've seen a destitute-looking beggar, wearing filthy rags, climb into a brand new Cadillac upon conclusion of his daily begging routine, as a means to justify not giving beggars change. So would a 'fake' beggar who pretends to be destitute in order to earn a decent living with his begging routine evoke an Appeal to Starvation fallacy, if they were to justify their begging by claiming to be starving? No, they'd simply be lying. They'd be making a false claim. A fallacy isn't a false claim, it is a claim of faulty logic. And that's the same for a white nationalist who claims to be traumatized by having to listen a little closer to understand an immigrant's accent. The white nationalist wouldn't be evoking an Appeal to Trauma fallacy, they'd just be making a false claim. For Appeal to Trauma to be fallacious, actual trauma would have to not have any explanatory power, in other words, it would have to not be traumatic. We cannot invoke an 'Appeal to' fallacy for anyone who benefits from lying about why they deserve the benefits. Not only does it unfairly stigmatize and further victimize the majority of people who are in some way disenfranchised, on the basis of there being a 'few bad apples', the bad apples themselves wouldn't even be doing anything fallacious, they'd simply be lying, also known as making a false claim, engaging in deception, or telling an untruth.2A0B:F4C2:4:0:0:0:0:99 (talk) 11:08, 5 October 2025 (UTC)