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This study demonstrates how unresolved trauma affects individuals' capacity to create healthy, functional lives. It describes the foundational relationship between personal trauma and social oppression that creates a cycle of dependence on lower functioning physiological, psychological, and social mechanisms. This 'Cycle of Devolution' has its origin in humanity's disconnection from its greatest resources ­ including, basic life rhythms, mutually-enhancing relationships, sustainable communities, and ancestral wisdom. At the very roots of modern civilization, unresolved personal trauma has impacted the social systems that shape modern life ­ including, child-rearing, family, education, religion, and culture. However, this trauma-induced cycle shifts as individuals successfully renegotiate traumatic experiences, altering the way they relate to themselves, their families, and the world. This paper relies on the new science of Somatic (body-oriented) Psychology to unravel the mystery of trauma and oppression. Specifically, Peter Levine's model of Somatic Experiencing is explored in its use of healing trauma as a vehicle for personal and social transformation. Working with the thwarted physiological responses to trauma, this approach awakens individuals' creative impulses and self-regulatory functioning. In this way, healing from trauma provides an opportunity to reorganize personal and social life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv

PROLOGUE 7

INTRODUCTION 9

I. THE CYCLE OF DEVOLUTION
The Birth of Civilization 14
Ghosts from our Past 23
The Myth of Socialization 27
The Social Pathology of Normalcy 33
Devolution 42
"Civilization Has Not Yet Begun" 47
And Back to the Cradle 51
II. THE HEALING CRISIS
Body & Soul 55
Cycle of Experience 59
Traumatic Processing 71
Character Modes of Survival 81
Trauma Healing 95
Trauma as Awakening 100
III. THE CYCLE OF EVOLUTION
The Paradox of Personal (and Social) Change 113
New Science of the Organism 119
Helping Relationships 126
Primal Connections 135
A Civilization of Wild 146

CONCLUSION 152

EPILOGUE 155

APPENDICES 157

BIBLIOGRAPHY 168

There are so many people that have touched me along my way. I want to begin by acknowledging my faculty advisors at Vermont College: Margaret Blanchard, Eleanor Ott, and Walter Zeichner. All three have provided me with the space I needed to grow, while still holding me within my process. They have put up with my stubborn dismissals and righteous denials, and have shared in my opening up as a learner and human being. The Vermont College/Union model of education rests on the vision and strength of such creative individuals, and I am enormously grateful to have been in relationship with them during my learning process. I want to include a heart-felt thanks to Walter for spending so many hours with me discussing clients, the state of our world, and our lives; but mostly, simply becoming good friends.

Likewise, thanks to Peter Collins for offering me his 'floor' and for modeling a life-affirming approach to being. Our relationship has meant so much to me and allowed me to experience a deeper sense of intimacy. I want to also acknowledge my Men's Group - the sensitive and honest men that have allowed me to share my emotional process and have appreciated me even more for this sharing.

I wish to express my gratitude to Larry Heller and Peter Levine for their invaluable contributions to the field of trauma, and for their effect on my development as a therapist. Thanks to Lynn Westenberger for making Somatic Experiencing a reality in Vermont, and to our SE Vermont group. Thanks also to Dave Berger for his insightful supervision.

I offer appreciation to all my clients, at Johnson State College and in private practice, who have touched me so deeply. Thanks to the team at the Counseling Center at Johnson State College that I was privileged to be a part of for two years. Specifically, I want to express deep gratitude to clinical director Andy Kelly for supporting me in my development process as a clinician, and for being a friend.

I am honored to have a few good friends and family that have stood by my side even when I was frustrated, irritable, pessimistic, and overtired. Thanks to those specifically who helped me in my study, reading, editing and commenting on my process: Chris Moutenot, for his encouragement and sensitive sharing; Jasmine Lamb, for her enthusiasm and ideas; Jeremy Farkas, for his willingness to challenge my ideas; Neal Jacobs, for his thoughtfulness and optimistic outlook; Mike, Sherri, and Emma Ellis, for their kinship and good spirit; Heath Wilson, for modeling health and determination; Danny Schaffer, for his authenticity and courageous journey; Mitch Hall, for his valuable contributions to the field of childhood health and trauma; Zarni and Soe Htay, for their honest reflections and passion; Jeroen Rotering and Revital Schahaf, for staying the course with me, and no matter where we are on this planet, for being a home away from home.

I offer my deep thanks to Mom and Don, for respecting me enough to join in my healing process and work towards a greater understanding for our family; as well as for all their support and encouragement. Thanks to Dad, who has always modeled passion and commitment to the scientific process. I am also very grateful for having such deep support from the Minz-Koch family: Barbara, Reiner, Oma and Opa, for believing in us and helping to make the Kammer-Minz dreams a reality.

I am honored to have Min Zaw and Yee Zaw in my life ­ and I am so thankful for all their inspiration and brotherhood. The Wildflower Land vision still lives within me.

Lastly, words cannot express my deep gratitude and love for my family, Sarah and Koda Zaw. I would still be traveling around the world looking for the meaning of life if I hadn't met my greatest teacher and companion in Lahu Land, and then three years later blessed again in Montpelier. Thanks for being in my life; for giving me so much love and support; for all the patience, understanding, and belief in me; for not letting me forget how it feels to be alive; for reminding me to play and cuddle and laugh and relax; and for inspiring me to make this world a better place. I love you guys.

When I was a child, I grew up in suburbia. It was a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, but could have easily been a suburb of Chicago, Detroit, Denver, or Seattle. I enjoyed the comfort of my surroundings but longed for something more wild. I took refuge in the woods behind my home. Even though they were only a few acres of trees, shrubs and rocks, they were alive. Birds, squirrels, frogs, raccoons, even deer would pass through, and make this refuge their temporary home.

Most of my time was spent on concrete. Sidewalks, roads, parking lots, strip malls, schools, churches, and temples ­ suburbia is a concrete jungle, extending from the heart of the city. Next to my wooded refuge was an enormous parking lot for the Jewish temple that owned the wooded lot. Although my friends and I would ride our bikes and play ball here, we usually would end up under the covering of the trees.

Many times ­ waiting for my friends to arrive or during long conversations at dusk ­ I would sit on the sidewalk in youthful contemplation speculating on the curious growth between the slabs of sidewalk concrete (in which I would always surreptitiously carve my initials). Every summer there would be a wildflower poking desperately through the concrete expanse. It never made much sense to me, how in an area covered by layers of thick stone and concrete, vegetation could grow.

Even as a child, I wanted to know about life and how life survives even under the heaviest oppression. I did not spell it out so clearly at the time, but as I sat with the deformed wildflower reaching out towards life, I, myself, was reaching out towards life; even under some oppressive forces.

Years later I revisited this parking lot and its adjacent wooded acreage. Amidst heavy construction, I quickly realized that the woods had been torn down completely and they were building an addendum complex to the Jewish temple. The enormous parking lot remained intact. Feeling nostalgic and sad, I sat for a moment and thought about how a piece of my childhood was torn down with those woods, never to be replaced.

Yet, I smiled as I remembered the wildflower reaching out towards life. I knew that even with a complex of concrete structures oppressing the soil of the earth, life would manage to grow. It might not be pretty, graceful or robust, but it will grow. I drove away feeling lighter, a little more hopeful, knowing that life finds a way to grow.

This paper is designed to answer my childhood question about how life continues to grow, even under the heaviest of oppression. This process took me into the deepest, darkest depths of humanity, and has brought me out the other end. It was necessary for me to traverse the agony and torment of humanity, to grasp our incredible resiliency. This process also took me into the deepest, darkest depths of my own being, and has brought me out the other end. It was also necessary for me to traverse the agony and torrent of my own being. Throughout this journey I was able to process my own emotional anguish, and reconnect to the life force within me that is reaching out towards life. This paper is an expression of my own resiliency and hope for our future.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to live and work among the Burmese exiled community on the Thailand-Burma border. My wife, Sarah, and I went to Thailand without any agenda or plan of action, simply to help the Burmese people in any way we could. We had both been inspired by their mass movement for democracy, and outraged at their continued oppression by the Burmese military regime. We wanted to see if we could offer them support and assistance. We soon found a place ­ I was teaching English and Sarah was working in a clinic for refugees. Because we had gone independently, and we were not with any aid organization, we were able to get to know the people we worked with in an intimate way. For Sarah and me, we were not there for jobs or for income, we were there to get to know the Burmese people, to form relationships, and join them in their struggle.

Soon, we were invited into the Burmese exiled community. I would spend mornings in Burmese teashops and nights in someone's home, talking politics, international affairs, poetry, art, and music. I traveled around the border area visiting the makeshift villages of refugees and migrant workers. I spent hours upon hours hearing about the diverse cultures of Burma, her distinguished history, the British colonial rule, the repressive 40-year Burmese military rule, the grass-roots democracy movement, and the mass Burmese exile into neighboring countries. I got to know the Burmese people, and listened to their cries of despair and hope. They are a proud people and were suffering the incredible indignities of being reduced to the impoverished conditions of refugees. They expressed their dream for a new Burma ­ one in which democracy rules, where human rights are championed, where ethnic and religious diversity is respected, where children are raised knowing that they have a future, where students have schools to attend, where adults can work and express their creativity openly and freely, and where Burma, once again, returns to her place as a vibrant culture with freedom and security for all.

Presently, things are very different for the Burmese people. Burmese life had reached a point for so many individuals and families that they could not even live safely in their own homes anymore, and had to leave their homeland altogether. Stories of countless atrocities, at the hands of the Burmese military regime, were disturbing and haunting: burned villages, violent political and religious repression, mass arrest, lengthy prison sentences and horrific prison conditions, torture, slave and child labor, forced inscription of young boys and men, rape and sexual abuse - the list goes on and on. It seemed there was no end to the punishment inflicted upon the Burmese people, who simply attempted to live their lives. The Burmese I spent time with in Thailand huddled together in community and fought for their own existence and future, in a foreign country that did not want them, calling out for help from the international community that seemed to ignore them.

There came a point in my life with the Burmese exiled community in Thailand when I felt that what I was experiencing was too much for me to handle. I had no way to metabolize all the despair, the terror, and the hopelessness. What could I possibly do to help my friends? How could I possibly be of help to the Burmese people, when I, myself, felt so overwhelmed? How could I reconcile that at any moment, I could leave, with my American passport in hand, and go nearly anywhere I liked? How could I ever leave the people I had come to know so well, knowing that this treatment of human beings exists, at the hands of other human beings? How could I ever trust humankind again?

I did not know what to do, I had no way of figuring out how I could help. I began to suffer from anxiety, paranoia, nightmares, stomach pains, and alternating fits of rage and despair. I felt the oppression as emotional and physical symptoms, more directly than I ever had before. I had been touched by some of the powerlessness and helplessness that the Burmese people experience every day of their lives.

Then, something shifted. But not in me alone. Several of our closest Burmese friends had moved in with us, and every night we stayed up late - talking, playing guitar, singing, visiting with other friends, and simply being together. One evening, while sitting in a circle on the floor discussing the usual topics ­ global and Burmese politics, art, literature, music, and our dreams for a better world ­ the energy between us felt different. We were tuned in to each other in an indescribable way, and our conversation was building. We had no idea what was occurring at the time, but as each individual shared, something was happening. A vision was forming.

This vision was based on the overwhelming feelings that none of us knew how to metabolize. It seemed that there was no way to adequately process these feelings. But each one of us, on some level, felt compelled to respond to these feelings. The vision of the Wildflower Land was born that night. This vision was based on a metaphor I used at one point in the evening when I grabbed a pen and paper and drew a series of images, trying to convey what I was feeling. In the first image, I drew the globe of the Earth, covered fully with wildflowers. The second image was of an enormous hand coming down over the Earth and crushing all the wildflowers. The third image was the globe of the Earth, covered with countless, damaged wildflowers, some broken and many mangled and flattened. This sparked the conversation even more, as we talked about how to revitalize the wildflowers and realize a wildflower land, once again. One of our artist friends was also drawing as we talked, and soon flipped over the paper he was working on and showed us the following image:

Yes! This was it! A lone wildflower growing through barbed wire (although this can also be seen as a crown of thorns). This image was perfect, because indeed, the oppression leads to isolation, and the wildflower has to manage to grow on its own, and will do so, in whatever way it can. But the wildflower is leaning over, reaching out towards life and to others, calling out to a greater hope.

My study, Trauma & Civilization, emerged from this vision. I appreciate the enormity of this subject. I knew that it would be no simple task to facilitate the rebirth we envisioned together that night. It would require us to move 'outside of the box,' exploring possibilities that might otherwise be disregarded. It would require us to take risks that might put us face to face with our limitations and shortcomings. For me, this study reflects my movement outside the box, as well as my risk-taking. I had to take shortcuts, use generalizations, consider controversial theories, and employ my poetic license ­ in order to share my vision on paper.

From my early childhood, I have wondered why humans are not free; why minorities, women, and children are so often oppressed; why we suffer from war, violence, poverty, physical, emotional, and spiritual distress; why we are destroying our planet; and why we allow this all to continue? I have begged for the answer: What is the key to getting out of this trap?

This paper is my attempt to answer this burning question. This is my journey into the depths of humanity, into the depths of my own experience. I do not profess to know the truth or to declare that my way is the right way. I am simply attempting to respond to the suffering I experience as a human being on this planet, amidst such incredible pain and despair. I feel that I owe this to myself ­ to the child within me that has been oppressed and cries out to be heard ­ and to my family, to my child. And I feel that I owe this to the countless individuals throughout the world that are oppressed, and crying out to be heard. At the same time, my response empowers me to live life in a more grounded way, and give back to the world from this place. This journey is about healing.

During this process, through my own experiences and studies, I entered into the exciting discourse on psychological trauma. Trauma, manifesting as any experience that overwhelms an individual's capacity to deal effectively with the situation at hand, is currently a popular topic within the field of psychology. There are many definitions of trauma, and even more treatment approaches designed for the resolution of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, I soon gravitated to somatic approaches, and in particular Peter Levine's 'Somatic Experiencing.' I began training in this naturalistic method for healing trauma, and found myself transformed - as a therapist and an individual. Moreover, I was inspired by the work of Wilhelm Reich, who with his far-reaching and controversial studies laid the foundations for the development of somatic psychology.

I found that a biopsychosocial approach ­ from the bottom-up ­ allowed me to uproot the mystery of oppression. Psychological trauma and social oppression are intimately related. Yet, this relationship is rarely described. In the process of exploring it, I found solid ground with which to approach the nagging question, "Why do we oppress each other?"

Acknowledging the trap we are in puts us in direct confrontation with a society organized around trauma. The collective distress and destruction we experience every day of our lives ­ in the form of violence, disease, war, poverty, famine, and other life-denying forces ­ challenges our most basic impulses of human connectedness: trust, empathy, compassion, mutual aid, and pleasure in life.

As I write, I feel an immense despair welling up within me. I also feel angry, frustrated, and still determined to find another way. What is it that makes human beings act to destroy life? These questions and their associated feelings are so overwhelming that it is easy to feel paralyzed, or trapped in an attempt to make sense of it all. I am writing this paper for all the people who have found themselves asking these complex 'why' questions about the state of our society, yet who have found no sufficient answers. I am writing this paper for all the people who feel disheartened, but dream of another way. This paper is written for the 'we' who are struggling to be better individuals, better parents, and live in a better world. For, as Reich wrote, "The first thing to do is to find the exit out of the trap" (Reich, 1973, p. 470).

This paper is designed to illuminate the intricate relationship between personal trauma, social oppression, and the transformative power of healing trauma. The first section, The Cycle of Devolution, documents the interdependent relationship between personal trauma and social oppression. The second section, The Healing Crisis, explores the transformational potential of healing trauma. The third section, The Cycle of Evolution, outlines a vision for a nourishing, sustainable, and life-affirming regeneration of human life.

Like the lone wildflower growing through barbed wire, we, too, can renegotiate the difficulties in life, and realize growth, pleasure, and peace. Understanding the effects of trauma ­ its life-denying and life-affirming capacities ­ enables us to chart a course for our potential evolution. We hold the seeds for our possible transformation within our bodies and minds. My hope is that each one of us can find the healing he or she needs to cultivate these seeds, and someday re-experience the deep pleasure of being alive.

Imagine a life where all people feel safe, secure, loved, and protected. In this world, there is no interpersonal violence, no child abuse, no sexual abuse, no crime, no corruption, no poverty, no famine, no chronic stress, and no war. Individuals do not have to pay for the right to live on a piece of land, do not have to pay for food to eat or water to drink, do not have to pay for health care, and do not have to work for their living. Individuals work a few hours each day to supply the basic necessities for living (i.e., hunting and gathering, constructing shelters), but most of their time is spent in relationship with others ­ preparing and eating food, telling stories, singing, dancing, playing, nurturing one another, and exploring the surroundings. Individuals do not have to worry that they will be harmed by other people, do not have to worry about breaking the law and going to prison, and do not have to worry about being denied their natural impulses. Individuals live together in small groups where everyone calls each other brother and sister, mother and father, uncle and aunt, grandmother and grandfather; there is no difference if you are blood related or not, the feeling of kinship is always present. Anywhere people go within a certain region, they are welcomed and celebrated. Diversity is accepted as individuals are expected to act according to their own prerogative. It is this quality that produces novelty, creativity, and merriment within the community. If there is any kind of disruption in the individual's life, or in the life of the community, it is immediately tended to by the entire community. No one will ignore or invalidate the problem; it is everyone's problem until it is solved. In this world, there is no fear ­ of oneself, of others, of the future, of the unknown ­ there is an implicit trust in life itself, and a continuum of life experience that has existed forever, and will continue to exist forever. The natural rhythms of life are adhered to within every individual, within every community, and it is taken for granted that it will always be this way.

This is no utopian vision. As hard as this may be for us to believe, based on extensive research among many academic fields, this way of life is our ancestral heritage (DeMeo, 1998; Duffy, 1984; Eisler, 1987; Forbes, 1992; Liedloff, 1985; Shepard, 1973, 1998; Turnbull, 1972). For hundreds of thousands of years, humans, like other animals, lived simply, in relation to the rhythms of the planet. There were many great challenges in living so directly with the earth, but as we evolved, our internal systems (e.g., brain and nervous system) adapted to enhance our chances for survival. In fact, the human organism is constantly adapting itself to its environment, and new systems grow and develop while others are replaced and modified. Humans could not have survived for as long as we have if we were not constantly working in relationship with our environment.

Some 6,000 years ago or so, life was drastically altered for a small group of humans living in a region now called Saharasia, which stretches across North Africa, the Near East, and into Central Asia (DeMeo, 1998, p. 7). Could it be possible, James DeMeo (1998) asks in his seminal work Saharasia, that this alteration was the genesis of 'child abuse, sex repression, warfare, and social violence,' setting the human race on a course of devolution? The Old Testament narrates the 'original sin' story of Adam and Eve, and humanity's subsequent fall from grace. Similarly, the mythic quest for a lost paradise, with the hope for universal abundance, has motivated daring explorations with the hope of seeking a return to a connected state. Many other religions and philosophies throughout the world tell similar stories of humanity's disconnection from natural life. Could it be that these stories are mythological tales of a time in history when humanity lost its place in the world?

I contend that this split, which DeMeo so brilliantly documents, was the conception of civilization as we know it. The date of humanity's earliest development of civilization ­ as characterized by domestication, agriculture, permanent settlements, and conquest ­ is debated in academic circles, with estimates ranging from 14,000 to 2,000 BCE. I rely on DeMeo's hypothesized 4,000 BCE out of the necessity for simplification, and not anthropological accuracy. Furthermore, I will use the general terms of 'civilization' and 'tribal' life, as messy and controversial as these terms may be, to describe the differences between peoples' way of life. Other scholars have attempted to be more precise with differentiating between civilized and pre-civilized cosmologies (DeMeo, 1998; Eisler, 1987; Glendinning, 1994; Ingold, 2000; Liedloff, 1985; Shepard, 1973, 1998). I want to emphasize that I am using this simplistic dichotomy as a necessary generalization due to the scope of my study. When I use these terms, I am highlighting organizational differences between cultures. I intend to focus more generally on the way these opposing cultures affect individuals, and how the individuals living in these different cultures relate to and influence their own culture.

A people's way of perceiving and being in the world is at the root of the way they organize their society, the technologies they use, and the way they live in relation to the Earth. Although civilization and tribal life are generally differentiated according to their defining characteristics, at a deeper level, they stand as two very different cosmologies. The biological, emotional, psychological, and social functioning of individuals and groups adhering to these two different ways of being display marked differences. In the most simplistic terms, civilized ways rely on the domination and manipulation of natural life functions, whereas tribal ways rely on the dependence and reverence of natural life functions. Civilized peoples display distrust and fear towards the life process, whereas tribal peoples display trust in life.

Although there are a myriad of different cultures within a single civilization, for the purpose of this study, I will use 'civilization' to include all societies that live according to certain shared cultural norms (e.g., nation-states, private property, law enforcement, and monetary medium of exchange) and technological methods (e.g., agriculture, husbandry, and irrigation). I will use 'tribal' people when referring to those communities whose lives are based primarily on hunting and gathering; who live in small clan groups and do not organize into cities or societies; who are generally nomadic peoples and not sedentary; who do not own land, food, or water; and for whom religion tends to be animist in nature. Tribal people are often referred to as being 'nature-based,' signifying "people who live, or have lived, in direct, unmediated participation with the forces and cycles of the natural world" (Glendinning, 1994, p. 9)..

Throughout this paper I use 'civilization' as a generalized term for the lifestyle that has been most notably demonstrated in Western, Euro-American countries over the past few hundred years. Specifically, I focused much of my research on American culture since I contend that the worldwide trend of 'globalization' (also known as 'Americanization' or 'McDonaldization') is in actuality a process of expanding American hegemony throughout the world. This trend towards increasing American influence around the world ­ as I have personally experienced in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe ­ is rapidly gobbling up local cultures and incorporating them within one standardized culture. Local cultures and peoples are under assault by a foreign web of power and control that is expanding at exponential proportions. Diversity is threatened as this dehumanizing culture incorporates others into its fold.

However, I will use the term 'civilization' to consolidate both Western and Eastern societies, for as vague and overarching a term it is, I intend to use it generally to signify those "'High Cultures,' which had developed agriculture, animal domestication, writing, monumental architecture, transportation methods, and technology" (DeMeo, 1998, p. 14). This embedded distinction leaves other cultures which did not develop into 'high cultures' (no matter if they are located in the West or the East), to be labeled 'uncivilized,' 'savage,' 'heathen' and/or 'pagan.' (DeMeo, 1998, p. 14). Although these terms are rarely used anymore, and have been replaced by more neutral terms such as 'indigenous,' 'aboriginal,' 'native,' or 'tribal,' the connotation of a 'lower' society still exists: These tribal people did not do anything with the land they inhabited for thousands of years; they still lived in primitive conditions, and had not discovered how to manipulate the land for their benefit; they suffered long periods of scarce food and water, and were at the complete mercy of their environments; and they had no cities, and certainly no organized system of governance or law enforcement. These are just a few of the judgments that 'civilized' explorers, priests, and scholars made (and still make) about the 'primitive' people they encounter, teach, and study. Although there are certainly exceptions to the rule, our cultural conditioning indoctrinates us to think and feel that we, as civilized humans, are at the pinnacle of evolution.

'Civilization' is commonly defined as "nations and peoples that have reached advanced stages in social development" (Thorndike, 1951), "which implies civil behavior and peaceful social conduct" (DeMeo, 1998, p. 14). It would be disingenuous to apply this definition to the society we live in today. Or, to the society that has existed for the past few thousand years ­ which has given us bloody wars, holocausts, religious crusades, slavery, oppression, induced famine, population explosion, and environmental destruction. "Over and over again we see European writers ranking as 'high civilizations' societies with large slave populations, rigid social class systems, unethical or ruthless rulers, and aggressive, imperialistic foreign policies. Conversely, societies with no slaves, no distinct social classes, no rulers, and no imperialism are either regarded as insignificant (not worth mentioning) or primitive and uncivilized" (Forbes, 1992, p. 47). It seems like a case of mass 'projective identification,' where an entire society has been indoctrinated so as to defend against what is classically referred to as 'separation anxiety.'

Separation, at any developmental stage, brings with it corresponding emotional responses from the organism, individual, or group. If DeMeo's thesis is accurate, the traumatized group living in Saharasia would have had to find some way to manage the overwhelming separation they so suddenly suffered from their established ways of being. Their radically altered relationship with the environment would necessitate a basic survival response. The individual (or group) is left utterly helpless but cannot tolerate the ensuing separateness ­ the fear is too great ­ so splitting and projective identification serve to generate a sense of trust "in the unconscious phantasy of omnipotent control of the object" (Jongsma-Tieleman, 1996). Projective identification is a process by which an individual (or group) splits off a part of oneself and projects this part onto another (person or object), and thus attributes one's own characteristics to the projected object. The trust gained through an imagined control over the object allows the individual to manage the intolerable feelings which are now experienced outside of the individual, as a property of the projected object. This 'omnipotent control' allows for individuals (and societies) to manage the terror associated in being disconnected from a nurturing object. In individuals, this disconnection occurs with misattuned or abusive caretakers; in a society, this disconnection occurs with separation from the natural rhythms of the life process, most clearly experienced in direct relationship with the land.

The civilization we live in today clearly expresses itself as an omnipotent power over the life process. Life itself has become the object onto which humanity's unconscious, overwhelming feelings are projected. In particular, 'primitive' people have suffered the wrath of 'civilized' people. The history of civilization demonstrates the brutal methods used as 'civilized' invaders dominated and subjugated whole nations of people. Trees, forests, soil, mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans, and every animal on Earth have also been an object of humanity's projections. Our environmental crisis is a clear demonstration of how far humanity has gone to rid the planet of wild life. In science, genetic research has allowed human beings to genetically modify living organisms, even going so far as to clone animals. Throughout the course of the past 6,000 years, there has been a progressive development towards a more centralized hegemony over the world, even venturing out into space. This process has deepened the perceived split between 'civilized' humans and 'nature', including the false dichotomy of mind and body (Shepard, 1973).

The guiding paradigm now suggests that humans can control anything and everything. We betray our animal origins by believing that we no longer are part of nature. "Intelligence becomes severed from feeling, intuition, imagination. Work becomes disassociated from spontaneity, vitality, generativity" (Lorenz & Watkins, 2001). These disconnections, justified by our false belief in humans as holding dominion over the Earth, interrupts integrated functioning and sets up a top-down approach of authoritarian, dominating rule. Intelligence and work become tools of a disconnected people and culture. One of the first areas in which this altered relationship with life was observed was in civilization's dependence on domestication and husbandry. With our perceived ability to control life, we attempt to modify the environment for the betterment of human beings. We do this based on a fear that the environment is inadequate or aberrant in some respect. I contend that it is our disconnection from 'nature,' and inability to appropriately process our inner feelings, that causes such tremendous fear and need to control. Ironically, our attempt at calming our internal state of anxiety turns into a paranoid fear of attack. The aggressive impulses that civilized humans find intolerable, when projected, then animate these external objects with the threatening feelings that individuals once felt within themselves. What was an internal source of threat has now been externalized. This provides some relief in that there is now an illusion of control, but it also leads to an obsessive drive to eradicate all perceived threats, be they bears, wolves, bees, mosquitoes, rivers, black-skinned humans, animist villagers, fertile women, crying children ­ the list goes on and on.

Despite our semblance of control over life, with the 'progress of civilization' has come mental and emotional illness, an onslaught of disease, and the breakdown of our basic support systems, for no individual or group is capable of projecting all of one's intolerable feelings onto external objects. Much of the unacknowledged overwhelming feelings which are not projected out are expressed as uncontrollable acts of violence and destruction upon other members within the same group, society, or species. This social implosion then serves to create the dangerous, threatening environment that was originally feared ­ the source of the intolerable feelings. Projective identification, in a sense, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Similarly, instead of acting out, individuals may turn to using self-harm, addiction, and possibly suicide as means of controlling their feelings of overwhelm. Like the society in the midst of self-attack, individuals become exhausted from fighting and defending, which turns inevitably to depression, apathy, and self-loathing. Traumatologists have observed that people and groups mostly cycle between sudden phases of acting out their aggression, and periods of self-degradation (Ross, 2003).

What lies beneath this all, in individuals and groups, is a profound disconnection from the biological processes of relationship and growth. Thus there is little or no self-awareness, but a deep sense of inadequacy and shame. "The feeling of fraudulence as an adult person, the sexual impotence or pseudo-potency (excited by secret perverse phantasies), the inner loneliness and the basic confusion between good and bad, all create a life of tension and lack of satisfaction, bolstered, or rather compensated, only by the smugness and snobbery which are an inevitable accompaniment of the massive projective identification" (Metzner as cited in Young, 1998).

Using the concept of projective identification it becomes clearer that identifying our society as civilization, in the truest meaning of the word, is an act of psychosis. Instead, it looks more like civilization is "a desperate defence against schizophrenic breakdown" (Metzner as cited in Young, 1998). What we call civilization is not humanity at the pinnacle of evolution. Civilization is humanity struggling to survive after a genuine fall from grace ­ which a group of people might have experienced much like a 'schizophrenic breakdown.' This fall from grace was humanity's disconnection from our ancestral ways of living in relationship with the world we inhabit.

DeMeo goes beyond detailing how civilization developed and what changed for humanity after civilization appeared, and asks why did this disconnection from natural life occur at all? He does not rest with the common explanations like overpopulation, technological advances, and the development of warrior castes, but goes on to demonstrate the underlying cause for these changes. If humanity was prospering so well for so many hundreds of thousands of years without crowding itself in or killing itself off, why, in a small period of time, would humans suddenly begin to do such things? "Nobody knows for certain how or why agriculture began," writes Paul Shepard in his book The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, but "from what evidence there is, it was neither a worldwide event nor a single event, but a shifting mixture of hunting, fishing, and planting, at first in a rather limited geographic area" (1973, p. 4) and then spreading out. Shepard does not venture into wondering why this "shifting" occurred, and rejects the "single event" hypothesis based on insufficient evidence. Yet, as the cliché goes, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it': There had to be some influence that necessitated the human development of such 'advancements,' or adjustments to the environment. Something must have broke.

According to DeMeo's (1998) thesis, some 6,000 years ago in the Saharasian region of the world, humanity experienced an overwhelming trauma, from which we never recovered. DeMeo hypothesizes that around 4,000 BCE this once fertile region ­ at least partly covered with grass and forests, as well as numerous streams, rivers, and lakes ­ experienced a significant drought which "would have been a major, and probably the only major mechanism which would lead to famine and starvation, given the normally self-reliant condition of early peoples" (DeMeo, 1998, p. 78). In a recent study done by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), satellite images found that in the past thirty years, what was left of the remaining marshlands of the Fertile Crescent region have desertified at an alarming rate, leaving only 10% of the original wetlands. "It is now mainly desert with large salt-encrusted patches" (National Geographic News, 2001). Although UNEP attributes the accelerated rate of desertification to damming and draining practices in the region, they acknowledge that it "is radically altering the way of life for people in the affected regions and threatening native wildlife" (National Geographic News, 2001). Thousands of indigenous Arabs in the region have had to flee their homes, and reportedly half a million Marsh Arabs alone have settled in refugee camps (National Geographic News, 2001). UNEP's analysis highlights the disruption that a sudden shift in ecological balance can cause for a people.

6,000 years ago, there were less options for people facing crises. If a major drought occurred, many people would have died from famine; and many more would have been forced to flee their homelands in search for food, water, and safety. Children would have suffered famine-induced disease and many would have died.
Surviving children will not recover to full physical or emotional vigor once food supply is restored, and will suffer lifelong physical and emotional effects.As adults, these individuals who have suffered through severe famine during childhood will raise their own children differently from prior generations, even during times of plenty.This persistence of culture-shock takes place by virtue of altered behavior and altered social institutions, which adjust to the new drought-famine-starvation conditions.Under such conditions, many people die, family ties are shattered, and mass migrations take place. With so much death and displacement, family life is gradually or even radically diverted away from prior emotionally-rich and pleasure-oriented patterns; new patterns emerge, focused on basic survival, and with little or no emphasis upon pleasurable emotional bonding or social living. (DeMeo, 1998, pp. 6-7)
This major trauma of drought-induced famine might have been the impetus for civilization as we now know it. Sigmund Freud (1961) noted that civilization "must present the struggle between Eros and Death, between the instinct of life and the instinct of destruction, as it works itself out in the human species.And we may probably add more precisely, a struggle for life in the shape it was bound to assume after a certain event [italics added] which still remains to be discovered" (p. 82). Freud did not accept his society's confidence in civilization as representing "civil behavior and peaceful social conduct" (DeMeo, 1998, p. 14). He experienced life during two major world wars, countless other social disturbances, and got close to thousands of individuals' internal agony. Freud thus considered civilization to be an expression of a post-traumatic struggle between the life force and the death instinct. However, I would restate this as a struggle between the trust in life and the fear of life. Trust, which is our birthright, has been challenged by a post-traumatic state which produces a basic anxiety about being a living organism.

The terror and helplessness associated with sudden famine and its aftereffects can cause a serious disruption in the internal systems of a human being. Moreover, as the human organism adapts to such a disruption, old relationships to life change into new patterns, based on fear for survival. In a haunting study of the Ik people in northeastern Africa, Colin Turnbull (1972) documented the devastating consequences when an entire group of people are ravaged by drought, famine, aggression, and forced displacement. "Under the stress to which this society was subject, all the trimmings were shed, everything that was not directly functional to the problem of [individual] survival was abandoned" (Turnbull, 1972, p. 178). This meant that even the most basic relationships between friends, family, husband and wife, and even mother and child, were shed, and the only bond which remained was based on the terror of not having enough nourishment to survive the day. This obligatory bond, 'nyot' in the Ik language, signified not friendship or mutual aid, but basic exchange. Thus, this society was held together by a collective anxiety for survival. Human values such as trust, cooperation, commitment, affection, and empathy were no longer 'functional to the problem of survival' and were thus discarded in favor of a hyperindividualism that spelled the end to their traditional tribal ways (DeMeo, 1998; Turnbull, 1972). Turnbull reflects that this hyperindividualism, as graphic and disturbing as it was for him, a westerner, to observe, reminded him of our civilization.
This reduction of human relationships among the Ik to the individual level puts the Ik one step ahead of civilization, in some respects. Our society has become increasingly individualistic. We even place a high value on individualism and admire someone who 'gets ahead in the world', tending to ignore the fact that this is usually at the expense of others. In our world, where the family has also lost much of its value as a social unit, and where religious belief and practice no longer bind us into communities of shared belief, we maintain order only through the existence of coercive power that is ready to uphold a rigid law, and by an equally rigid penal system. The Ik, however, have learned to do without coercion, either spiritual or physical. It seems that they have come to a recognition of what they accept as man's basic selfishness, of his natural determination to survive as an individual before all else. (1972, p. 182)
Turnbull's picture of the Ik, a horrific allusion of what our civilization could become, demonstrates that when fear replaces trust, every single human system can and will break down under the stress of basic survival. In particular, the indispensable sense of trust which humans experience in relationship with life is replaced by anxiety and the need to manipulate life experience. Egalitarian models of sharing and cooperation are replaced by authoritarian models of oppression and dominance (Eisler, 1987, pp. xvii-xx). Wildness becomes domesticated. When this first occurred thousands of years ago, this would have elicited changes in the way we secured food, from hunting-gathering to agriculture; the way we lived as community, from small clans and tribes to large villages and cities; the way we provided for ourselves, from self-sufficient communities to a specialized society; and the way we exchange resources, from sharing and bartering to monetary and capital transactions. Even more, there would have been an imperceptible movement away from the basic wisdoms of our ancestry, as leaders emerged and attempted to justify their hegemony over the people. The leaders needed the people's direct relationship with the earth severed so that they could gather power and control over the people's ways of life. Meanwhile, the people, afraid and longing desperately for some kind of security in their lives, and not remembering their ancestral ways, would surrender their autonomy to the 'chosen' leaders. They would give up, or be forced to give up, their indigenous ways to the promise that civilization would create a greater solidarity of people, which would better all people's chances for survival and prosperity. Daniel Quinn calls this process the 'Great Forgetting,'
which, after all, is precisely a forgetting of the fact that we are exactly as much a part of the processes and phenomena of the world as any other creatureWe are unable to alienate ourselves from Nature or to 'live against' it. We can no more alienate ourselves from Nature than we can alienate ourselves from entropy. We can no more live against Nature than we can live against gravity. On the contrary, what we're seeing here more and more clearly is that the processes and phenomena of the world are working on us in exactly the same way that they work on all other creatures. Our ['civilized'] lifestyle is evolutionary unstable. (1996, p. 181)
Thus, the altered internal landscape of individuals soon modifies the external landscape of social relations, leading us into even more dangerous territory.

As a top-down authoritarian model replaced more egalitarian ways of living, social institutions shifted from protecting and nurturing individuals to safeguarding their own continuation and domination. In so doing, these institutions serve to distance individuals from life itself and thus cause harm to individuals. Civilization can be said to be a process that actually dehumanizes the inherent 'civil' behaviors of humans, by creating life-denying systems which inhibit the full and free expression of individuals. "Directly, through personal coercion, and indirectly, through intermittent social shows of force such as public inquisitions and executions, behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions that did not conform to dominator norms were systematically discouraged. This fear conditioning became part of all aspects of daily life, permeating child rearing, laws, schools. And through these and all the other instruments of socialization, the kind of replicative information required to establish and maintain a dominator society was distributed throughout the social system" (Eisler, 1987, pp. 82-83).

Beginning with newborn infants, this process of 'socialization' is at work to assure that the new human being becomes a part of the ongoing juggernaut called civilization. This socialization process is at work not only via parenting norms of behavior, but also through education, religion, mass media, and the distancing and destruction of life resources which reconnect us to our greater nature, and thereby replenish our basic life energy. This process is successful when children's organismic functioning is fragmented so that the primal, 'wild' impulses within them are silenced ­ at which point the impulses have become dissociated from their basic life experience. This major trauma, which often becomes the baseline for future traumatic experiences, is developmentally-induced so gradually and surreptitiously, that many of us do not even acknowledge its life-long impact. It is a central premise of this study that the relationship between personal trauma and social oppression, with its genesis in traumatic experience, perpetuates a cycle of devolution for the human race [See Figure 1].

All one has to do is read psychohistorian Lloyd deMause's The History of Childhood to acknowledge how "monotonously painful" (1975, p. viii) the history of childrearing has been for the children of our civilization. Although children have endured this brutal treatment for many generations now, it is rare that we read, hear, or speak of such suffering. Even in my psychotherapeutic work, it is indeed rare that clients will initially express anger or resentment or blame toward their parents. Although clients may convey a vague unhappiness from their childhood, exploring this in relationship to their parents or caretakers seems almost taboo. Yet, these same clients are eager to report the current status of their distressing symptoms and troubling relationships in order to find some peace and healing in their lives. "Maybe it is taboo," I considered one day driving home from a day of clinical work, "to link one's parents to present suffering". When I have heard myself, or others, imply this connection, I have witnessed quick reactions in defense of the parents. It is almost as if bad parenting is accepted to be 'good-enough'; as in the common phrases, 'nobody's perfect' and 'parents are people too.' Of course they are, and as people, parents are not perfect and make mistakes. It seems that nearly all parents intend to love and support their children, and that very few parents want to harm their own children. But this does not erase the suffering they may have created for their children, who are also people too. It is certainly not the children's responsibility to 'forget' or 'let go' of their painful pasts, simply because it implicates others. This unspoken taboo is part of the Great Forgetting that perpetuates a civilization that harms its own children, and therefore its own future.

This taboo never seemed right to me, and certainly does not make sense to me. In my life, my present experiences are built on the foundations of my past experiences ­ all of them, from birth to infancy to childhood to last night. Together, all experience combines to create a context, or life process, that can be told like a story. How unusual it would be for a friend to begin telling a story a quarter-way into the tale. How frustrating it is to walk into a movie thirty minutes late. We spend the rest of our time trying to figure out what happened, and how this connects to what is happening now. Provided with such a context ­ from the beginning to the present ­ we can understand the movement and content of the story.

As emphasized in the Great Forgetting, we are a civilization with limited, or more accurately, distorted memory. The limitation and distortion of memory, for individuals as well as for groups of people, are aftereffects of post-traumatic stress (van der Kolk, 1994; 2002). So we are increasingly becoming a civilization that values newness, youth, progress, and the future. We are simultaneously losing our connection to tradition and culture, which has led to a standardization of culture. It can be argued that this process is the hotly debated phenomena we call globalization. During my stay on the Thailand-Burma border working with Burmese refugees, I discussed the globalization phenomenon with my Burmese friends. They expressed their anger and sadness over the loss of their ancestral ways, as western values and norms supplant their traditional Burmese (and ethnic Burmese) ways. One of my Burmese friends believed that the groundwork for this process was set in place during the years of British colonial rule. The colonial rulers inside Burma set up British-style schools, indoctrinated children to western cultural norms, and proselytized and converted some to Christianity. When the British were forced out at the end of World War II, the Burmese struggled to realize independence, politically, but also culturally. To this day, the diverse Burmese population struggles with this legacy, and the civil wars and forty-year authoritarian rule by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) is a testament to the fundamental disruption of traditional Burmese culture.

With the loss of our traditional cultures and ways, most of us do not even know who our ancestors were or how they lived for generations. Ostensibly we are taught that this is part of the democratization of the world, so that we can successfully progress unimpeded into the future, without the ethnic and religious conflicts, class struggles, and other ideological battles that have effected us for a few thousand years. However, there is a function in remembering history. It grounds us as a people, it binds us together as groups, it gives our culture roots, and creates a wider context for taking responsibility, making decisions, and understanding trends. And by so doing, our history links us to the collective well-being of our future.

In my birth country, the United States of America, we are taught a national history depicting our major achievements and battles; but the American people are all immigrants, displaced individuals searching for new identities in the New World of the Americas. We have created such noble ideals as The American Dream, the Melting Pot, 'One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.' We have the opportunity to quit jobs, leave relationships, and move locations. We can change our names, our religions, our beliefs, our behaviors, and our physical appearances. But because we have forgotten our history and development, as an American people, we are lost. Even though we have elevated the material quality of our lives through such noble ideals and technological innovations, well into our third century as a nation we are facing an existence evermore endangered by violence, distrust, corruption, oppression, and ecological destruction . Despite all the attempts to create an American identity full of integrity and strength, our identity is resting on the faulty foundations of this disconnection from the past.

Similarly, one can also perceive that individuals showing signs of illness are suffering at their foundations, and that their symptoms are expressions of their own systemic disconnection. Their foundations are rooted in the earliest moments of their history ­ starting from their prenatal development to their birth to their infancy to their early childhood, and building continually from here up through their adulthood. When, at some point, their development is challenged by an inhibitive outside force, the human organism responds. Humans, like all living organisms, are programmed to respond to our environments in a delicate relationship of survival, growth, and development. Our survival is based on this ability to respond. If humans are threatened, we are unable to reach out to satisfy our basic needs and desires. The nature of an individual's response is central to our understanding of the relationship between personal trauma and social oppression.

How an individual responds is dependent on his environmental support. Inherently, as a living organism, an individual will respond by choosing the direction which goes towards life (DeMeo, 1998; Maslow, 1968; Reich, 1973). This means that living organisms nearly always make choices based on securing their own survival (an exception to this being when others, especially loved ones, are involved; the most prominent example being when a child is involved and the parents respond towards the child's safety first). If the organism experiences an outside threat and is able to securely respond to such a threat ­ as a skunk will respond to threat by spraying or a rabbit will respond to harm by running away ­ the organism will grow more resilient based on its own ability to respond to life experiences. It will integrate these experiences in promoting its own existence. If, on the other hand, the organism experiences an outside threat to its being and does not feel securely able to respond to such a threat ­ as a caged dog that is beaten when yelping or a child that is held down when harmed ­ it will have to find some way to protect itself from future threats.

A significant method for self-protection is the act of forgetting, repressing, and/or splitting off memories of traumatic events. In addition, an individual will constrict his range of life experience, or, as Levine calls it the 'range of resiliency' (Heller & Levine, 1997a), so that he feels secure enough within that safe range of sensations and feelings. Meanwhile, any encounter outside that range of tolerable experience, either positive or negative, is registered as a direct threat (Heller & Levine, 1997a; Levine, 1997). These techniques, among others, are an individual's adaptive (self-preserving) response to what he recognizes as a life-denying force. In fact, most of the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be understood as coping mechanisms for individuals living in an environment (either actual or perceived) of danger, harm, and/or neglect ­ in a world stripped of safety, order, and/or meaning.

During early stages of development, humans use coping responses like splitting, repressing, projecting, and dissociating as means to assure their survival. These mechanisms initially serve to protect the natural impulses of the child when an environment of safety is lacking. Eventually, however, survival and development become dependent on these protective mechanisms. Children require love, empathy, support, and nourishment ­ based on their own requirements ­ for their optimal development. If a child is born into a denying, stifling, abusive and/or misattuned environment, he will contract away from the intolerable pain. If this contraction becomes a chronic response to his environment, then his development will be severely disturbed. How significantly the child's natural impulses are blocked and/or repressed from his environment will determine to what extent the protective mechanisms are used (DeMeo, 1998; Maslow, 1968; Miller, 1990a; Reich, 1961, 1973).

Thus, the individual pays a high price for the chronic repression of his natural impulses ­ over time his range of resiliency narrows, his access to his sensations and feelings is disturbed, and his ability to experience life diminishes. In addition, his mental acuity, relational flexibility, innate resiliency, and creative, spontaneous expression are all functionally disrupted. In other words, an individual's bioenergy (life energy) is channeled into resisting life, thereby sacrificing his natural expansion towards life. Therefore, under the threat of more danger, these survival techniques become the basis for the adult personality. These protective mechanisms generate forgotten memories, unresolved traumas, and repressed emotional responses, which then become the building blocks of our 'character structures' ­ our way of experiencing and acting within ourselves and in the world. These character structures, with their limited range of resiliency and inhibitive manner, create inflexible, fearful, disturbed, and often dis-eased human beings. When we go out into the world to study, to work, to marry, to parent, to manage ­ to live adult lives ­ we necessarily influence the social structure. More than that, individuals create and maintain the social structure of a given society. When these social institutions are also inflexible, fearful, disturbed, and often dis-eased ­ expressed as cultural norms ­ this will then further influence our personal character development (DeMeo, 1998; Reich, 1970).

As Sandra Bloom and Peter Reichert articulate in their book Bearing Witness,
We live in a society that is 'organized' around unresolved traumatic experience. By making this claim, we intend to show that the effects of multigenerational trauma lie like an iceberg in our social awareness. All we see is the tip of the iceberg that is above the surface ­ crime, community deterioration, family disintegration, ecological degradation. What lies below the surface of our social consciousness is the basis of the problem ­ the ways in which unhealed trauma and loss have infiltrated and helped determine every one of our social institutions. (1998, p. 9)
In essence, this is the cycle of devolution. The awareness of this cycle gives us the responsibility, as parents, educators, family, and friends ­ as a civilization ­ for safeguarding children's development and protecting them from the overwhelming stress, abuse, and violence resulting from trauma.

The concept of socialization is a cultural remnant from tribal eras, when families lived together as clans, or in small, close-knit villages, and children played an important role in their community. The socializing tendency in human cultures, so vital when children played an integral role in the daily life of the community ­ e.g., taking care of younger siblings, helping gather and prepare food ­ has lost its original function in our mass, specialized, and technological civilization. Joseph Chilton Pearce suggests that humans have inherited a 'herd instinct' from our mammalian ancestors, which is the innate social impulse to commune together (2002). Yet, the biopsychosocial mechanism of socialization observed in our mammalian, and human (tribal) ancestors, has a different quality to it than what we now observe among modern, civilized humans. "The pleasure in gathering together with our own kind, found in most mammalian and avian life, is the source of community and fosters the model imperative; extended nurturing and care; mutual sharing of aesthetics, events, dreams, hopes, ideas, and ideals; mutual appreciation of works, skills, creativity, cooperative ventures; and the sharing of the higher, broader expanses of love ­ love of neighbor, self, and God.Socialization amounts to relationship and sharing, the very juice of life" (Pearce, 2002, p. 122). At one time we lived closer to our biological impulses, closer to animals than what we now think of as humans. At that time, the socialization of children was embedded in the continuity and natural rhythms of a particular, localized community.

With communities now more like conglomerations of unrelated and unfamiliar individuals, the socialization process has remained, but as a distorted mechanism in organizing a child's functioning within a given society. No longer are ancestral teachings passed down to children transgenerationally through their full participation within a society, where children learn the ways and wisdom of their culture from the inside-out. Now, cultural norms are taught from the outside-in. Socialization has become an external mechanism of control due to our disconnection from the natural rhythms of life. As such, the socializing process is vulnerable to manipulation by powerful individuals or groups intent on manipulating society according to their own agendas. We have encountered such authoritarian rule throughout civilization, time and time again.

There is an interdependence between our individual character structures, our familial structures, and our social structures. We, as individuals, are responsible for our society; and conversely, we, as a society, are responsible for our individuals. Although theoretically this seems quite obvious to us, practically we live as though this were not true. Many of us sacrifice the well-being of our families and communities for our own self interests, though some attempt to rationalize their workaholism, consumerism, and hyperindividualism as being for the benefit of others. Similarly, the leaders of our society often sacrifice individuals, individual freedoms, and the greater social welfare to benefit their ruling agendas, though they may attempt to rationalize their greed, power, and aggression as being for the benefit of our nation. The failure to recognize this fundamental relationship leads to the inability to understand the biopsychosocial consequences of raising our children under authoritative rule.

Authoritative rule, as I use it, means obedience to authority rather than freedom to follow one's own self-regulatory process. The latter does not mean chaos and anarchy. Freedom, when used specifically in reference to the child-rearing process, means providing young, innocent, and vulnerable human beings with the safety and support necessary for them to act from their most basic, biological impulses of life, growth, and creativity. Mostly, we are not supported in our process of developing into emotionally, mentally, and spiritually capable human beings, but are taught to value the hard work of making it in the world. A socialization process relying on external authority, as commonly practiced in civilization, amounts to no less than the destruction of the natural, organic, and biological impulses in the child. Among civilization, the child's innate sociality is rarely respected, and children are often treated as if they are unruly and depraved.

The historical account of child-rearing confirms that for several thousand years, children have been compliant to their parents, families, educators, priests, and the cultural norms of civilization (deMause, 1975, 2001; Miller, 1990a, 1990b). When compliance becomes a central tenet of the socialization process, acts of self-regulation look like disobedience, and disobedience warrants punishment. Alice Miller (1990a) quotes a 19th Century educator's counsel to a parent: "Such disobedience amounts to a declaration of war against you. Your son is trying to usurp your authority, and you are justified in answering force with force in order to assure his respect, without which you will be unable to train him" (as cited in Miller, 1990a, p. 1). Therefore, to adults molding compliant (inhibited) children, self-regulated children look deviant, unruly and wicked, unsocialized creatures driving us towards the moral decay of our civilization.

If this inhibitive child-rearing process is so deleterious, with such pernicious consequences, why is it that it has basically continued without interference for all these years? It can be "argued that parents and doctors, who themselves had suppressed various emotions related to their own childhood traumas, were incapable of either recognizing or sympathizing with the emotional traumas or needs of infants and children. [Wilhelm Reich] considered it axiomatic, that a person cannot recognize in someone else an emotion which they have learned to repress, and can no longer feel themself" (deMeo, 1998, p. 33). We cannot possibly expect to trust much less recognize a child's self-regulatory process if we, in our own lives, have had it forcibly stripped away or denied by our parents and society.

Understandably then, such a notion as allowing children an opportunity to live their young lives according to their own interests and curiosities has been widely challenged. Only recently has the push for more child-centered ideologies resurfaced in the form of alternative schools, innovative pedagogical approaches, egalitarian models for living in families and communities, natural homebirth methods, and the holistic health field (Eisler, 2002; Freire, 1970; Hall, 2002, 2003; Maslow, 1968; Neill, 1962; Rogers, 1977). Gradually, some people are beginning to recognize and sympathize with the plight of children growing up in a world not meeting their most basic needs. What these people are waking up to is the reality that children are growing up in a troubled, violent world. Even more, stripped of their freedom to act responsibly according to their own instincts and best interest, they are left at the mercy of such threatening environmental stimuli. This is frightening when we consider that the majority of violence against children occurs in their homes, and even more frightening when we consider that only 5% of all domestic violence gets reported (Perry, 2001). Even within what is supposed to be a safe environment for children ­ their own homes, in addition to public life including schools and churches ­ the right to live authentically is stripped from them and seized by external agents often in violent and fear-inducing ways. Consequently, many children lose their secure place in the society. They lose their ability to live according to their natural functions, instincts, interests and feelings; they lose access to their humanity. Instead, their way of being in the world is organized around fulfilling external demands, usually accompanied by terror, abuse, and traumatic stress.

Alice Miller refers to such pedagogical philosophies and practices as 'poisonous pedagogy.' This approach to child-rearing consists of denying the life of the child in deference to parental and social authority. 'Poisonous pedagogy' is characterized by its sadistic, repressive, and brutal influencing in order to 'teach' or 'train' children, appearing variously as different religious, ideological, and pedagogical methods to meet the times. The cultural and ideological context, then, socially permitted and even encouraged such widespread abuse. In the 1950s, the psychoanalyst Edward Glover wrote:
in social terms we can say that the perfectly normal infant is almost completely egocentric, greedy, dirty, violent in temper, destructive in habit, profoundly sexual in purpose, aggrandizing in attitude, devoid of all but the most primitive reality sense, without conscience or moral feeling, whose attitude to society (as represented by the family) is opportunistic, inconsiderate, domineering and sadistic.In fact, judged by adult social standards the normal baby is for all practical purposes a born criminal. (cited in Miller, 1990b, p. 42).
In contrast to the concept of self-regulation, which "implies a belief in goodness of human nature; a belief that there is not, and never was, original sin" (Neill, 1962, p. 104), the basic foundation for such 'poisonous' philosophies is the long-standing belief that the child is born evil, sinful, wicked, willful, and/or a blank slate. Due to these demonstrable qualities, it is the parents' duty to civilize, or socialize the child (deMause, 1974, 2001; DeMeo, 1998; Maslow, 1968; Miller, 1990a).

Although there is debate whether the treatment of children has evolved or devolved since pre-civilized times, there is little doubt that civilization's treatment of its children has a horrific record (deMause, 1974; DeMeo, 1998; Jensen, 2000; Karr-Morse & Wiley, 1998; Miller, 1990a). Many of the same abhorrent practices still exist today, in one form or another; sometimes as simple as egocentric parents neglecting their children's needs for attention and affection, and sometimes as complex as severely disturbed parents devastating their children's lives through physical, emotional, and/or sexual torture. According to Bruce Perry, who studies the neurodevelopmental impact violence has on children, "intrafamilial abuse, neglect and domestic battery account for the majority of physical and emotional violence suffered by children in [the United States]" (Perry, 1997). The figures of reported violence on children are horrifying (to think of what goes unreported!): Hitting children, otherwise known as physical abuse, is virtually universal; 50% of all infants six months to a year are physically abused; only one state, Minnesota, has outlawed the parental right to corporal punishment of their children; beating children in schools is still legal in twenty-three states; the number of abused and neglected children doubled from 1.4 million in 1986 to 2.8 million in 1993; during that same period, the number of children seriously injured quadrupled and the number of children sexually abused rose by 83%; 61% of all reported rape cases occurred to victims before the age of eighteen; 29% of all reported rape cases occurred to victims before the age of eleven (Bloom & Reichert, 1998; Hall, 2002). In addition, there are shocking figures of domestic violence, social violence, and self-inflicted violence (Bloom & Reichert, 1998). Tragically, these statistics seem to go on and on, endlessly, but the point is that child abuse ­ in the form of child-rearing or just plain victimization ­ produced, and continues to produce, dire consequences for our children, for our civilization, and for the world.

A.S. Neill, founder of Summerhill, a pioneering 'free school,' wrote: "The usual argument against freedom for children is this: Life is hard, and we must train the children so that they will fit into life later on. We must therefore discipline them. If we allow them to do what they likehow will they ever be able to exercise self discipline? People who protest the granting of freedom to children and use this argument do not realize that they start with an unfounded, unproved assumption ­ the assumption that a child will not grow or develop unless forced to do so" (Neill, 1962, p. 109). Neill demonstrated at his school, Summerhill, that in environments of freedom, understanding and acceptance, a child will organically mature into a place of self-regulation, capable and keen to take his or her place in society, without any external demands.

Similar to Neill's seemingly radical approach, tribal communities have historically valued and treated children as vital elements to the health of their society, trusting in their instinctive development towards life and creation. Jean Liedloff, who spent several years living among the Yequana Indians in the South American jungles, remarked that in traditional societies like the Yequana, "No orders are given a child that run counter to his own inclinations as to how to play, how much to eat, when to sleep, and so on" (Liedloff, 1985, p. 90), yet these children do not become antisocial, violent adults. In fact, these traditional societies expected the exact opposite ­ that as adults, such children would be self-reliant, independent and productive, ensuring the well-being of their community (Liedloff, 1985).

In my own experience in various 'Third World' countries, I have been amazed at the responsibilities that young children perform in their communities. For example, when I spent time in an indigenous Lahu 'hill tribe' village in Thailand, I witnessed young children caring for their baby siblings, cooking, cleaning, assisting adults in various tasks, and participating in community rituals. There did not seem to be any clear demarcation between the child and the adult within the community, and although some may read this as a hard life for children, it did not strike me that this was the children's experience. It seemed to me that children enjoyed having responsibility in their community, but also enjoyed the ample time to play with other children. Although I know that these children suffer in their own ways and that as an outsider it is difficult to truly grasp the intricacies of another culture, seeing children assume such essential roles in their community was inspiring. I do not think that these children are unique, or in any way innately different than other children. Rather, they are born into and raised in a world which fundamentally trusts them. This "assumption of innate sociality is at direct odds with the fairly universal civilized belief that a child's impulses need to be curbed in order to make him social.If there is anything fundamentally foreign to us in continuum societies like the Yequana, it is this assumption of innate sociality" (Liedloff, 1985, p. 84).

Psychologist Abraham Maslow (1968) found the same truth in studying 'self-fulfilling' individuals. He recognized that such people acted from their 'intrinsic conscience,' an unconscious place within themselves that holds their true nature, capacities, and destiny. "Since this inner nature is good or neutral rather than bad, it is best to bring it out and to encourage it rather than to suppress it. If it is permitted to guide our life, we grow healthy, fruitful, and happy" (Maslow, 1968, p. 4). Because the health and well-being of a society so obviously rests on the health and well-being of its children, traditional societies like the Yequana were structured to encourage the organic development of their children. They provided their children with environments rooted in freedom, tolerance, permissiveness, indulgence, physical affection and involvement in the decision-making process; absent were the strict rules, codes, disciplines, abuses, taboos and bodily mutilations that mark our 'civilized' societies. (DeMeo, 1998).

Our approach to child-rearing, revolving as it is around these rules, taboos and abuses, stigmatizes the young, innocent child, as if there was something wrong with him, as if he did something wrong. From this beginning, children are forced, out of necessity, to adapt to a world that is alien to their own wisdom and truth. In this way, it is not freedom that creates waywardness or insecurity in children, it is not allowing them this freedom that creates such distress. As Maslow (1968) observed, "Destructiveness, sadism, cruelty, malice, etc., seem so far to be not intrinsic but rather they seem to be violent reactions against frustration of our intrinsic needs, emotions and capacities" (p. 3). Socializing our children in a way that denies them of their innate curiosity and sociality isolates them from their people. It distances them from their ancestral wisdom. It separates them out from social life and designates them to 'child play' or in 'child care.' It disconnects them from their greater community, where they are socialized by being incorporated through their presence, observation, and when it is time, involvement, in the rhythms of their culture. A child "deprived of the experience necessary to give him the basis for full flowering of his innate potential will perhaps never know a moment of the sense of unconditional rightness that has been natural to his kind for 99.99 percent of its history. Deprivationwill be maintained indiscriminately as part of his development" (Liedloff, 1985, p. 48).

What is frightening to me is that we still continue to justify these child-denying behaviors without being aware of the consequences. Many of us have become desensitized to the pain, terror, and traumatic stress of the childhood experience. Moreover, we have been taught to believe that this experience is for our own good (Miller, 1990a). But is it really? Or, is it not about children at all, but about the anxiety parents, caretakers, and educators experience when facing such free impulses and emotional expressions ­ impulses and expressions that they as children were forced to repress? This might answer for the long list of child-rearing practices that to me, and others, seem like life-denying and traumatizing techniques.

Even today, such child-rearing practices are still employed by well-meaning parents: a harsh childbirth environment and experience; isolation at infancy; circumcision; denial of breastfeeding; withholding of food; timetable feeding; forced toilet training; swaddling; spanking; long separations; unfamiliar child care; and compulsory discipline. These practices are normal in our society and defining them as 'abusive' is highly controversial. Yet as children, to be denied our basic needs, to be neglected and removed from our caretakers, and to be made to conform to external demands, begs some consideration of exactly how it is that parents and other adults could inflict (what is generally unintentional) harm upon their own children. If we discount the belief that humans are basically evil or sinful ­ which goes against all intuitive and observable data ­ then there must be some force that affects us to the extent that we could harm our own kin. Since it is my contention that civilization is the disturbing force that oppresses our basic humanity ­ inhibiting our growth and development, and subsequently creating traumatic stress for individuals and groups ­ we must examine exactly how this process occurs if we ever hope to combat this destructive cycle of devolution.

When we look at the mounting crisis in the lives of young people today ­ the crises in family, education, social structures, deteriorating health and well-being, increasing violence in all its forms ­ all spilling over into the adult world in ever greater quantities, we must factor in our long century of disruptions of natural process on every level, starting with childbirth, bonding, and early nurturing. (Pearce, 2002, p. 109)
Early in his career as a psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich (1970, 1971, 1972) formulated an understanding of the human character structure, which he maintained was also exhibited in the social structure of a given society. Based on his clinical and sociological observations, Reich (1971) concluded that the inhibitive process of civilization splits the integrity of the human organism into three layers: the core, secondary, and peripheral layers. The biological core is the center of an organism's being and functions like the sun for our planet [See Figure 2]. Like the sun, the biological core nurtures us, fuels us, supports us, and provides us the light from which we see. It is the source from which our primary drives originate, orienting us towards survival and growth. The core "impulses, which were exclusively of a pleasure-seeking, social, and nonviolent character.present in the infant from the startalso include the spontaneous reaching out to the world and trusting qualities often seen in small children" (DeMeo, 1998, p. 28). In other words, at our depths, the human animal is naturally loving, creative, and inclined to relationship.

Unlike previous ideologies that stressed these pessimistic views on humankind, Reich's perspective echoed a fundamentally positive view that had been passed down for millennia in the teachings and culture of tribal peoples throughout the world (Duffy, 1984; Liedloff, 1985; Malinowski, 1985; Turnbull, 1972; Wolff, 2001). This fundamental belief in the goodness of all life was most clearly expressed in their child-rearing practices and their freedom of expressing natural impulses.

Reich, recognizing the bioenergetic current within all life, including the human organism, demonstrated that if an outside force does disturb basic functioning, the organism becomes split. Within humans, this split occurs psychosomatically. Life energy ('orgone') becomes stuck and trapped in certain areas of the body which affects the mental and emotional functioning of the individual; and once the psychological function is disturbed, this perpetuates a physiological contraction. "The rigidity of the musculature is the somatic side of the process of repression, and the basis for its continued existence" (Reich, 1971, p. 269). This muscular rigidity Reich likened to armor, which manifested both characterlogically (character armor) and physically (body armor) ­ different levels manifesting the same process of contraction. This overall contraction binds energy and thus inhibits the primary core impulses from their proper expression. A 'secondary layer' is thus created, which consists of all the repressed impulses that have become blocked and stuck, though which are still striving for expression [See Figure 3]. The impulses are eventually expressed, but no longer in their original form ­ they become what Reich termed 'secondary drives,' consisting of "sadism, greediness, lasciviousness, envy, [and] perversions of all kinds" (Reich, 1961, p. 204). These "socially-dangerous secondary impulses" (DeMeo, 1998, p. 29) grow stronger the more we inhibit and repress our primary impulses as infants, children, and later as adults.

Therefore, the evil and sinful human nature that some people have referred to within our civilization more accurately reflects a distortion of our human process, and not an original state. Through the creation of these antisocial secondary drives, a society built on fear, denial, and abuse is established.

In order to fit into this civilized society, children are conditioned from birth not to reveal their underlying distress, and instead find ways to adapt to the familial and cultural norms. Children learn to master the art of meeting external demands, thereby forming the socially-adjusted roles they are commanded to assume. They may look and act like 'good kids,' yet underneath the good kid ­ brewing, simmering, bubbling, seething, preparing to erupt ­ is the dis-ease and aggression that endangers us all. The compulsion to adapt creates more stress, and at the same time necessitates a peripheral, surface layer of behaving in order to contain the distress [See Figure 4]. It is unacceptable to disrupt the social norms within civilized society (i.e., 'rock the boat') without facing the punitive and merciless forces that require submission and conformism. Therefore, the peripheral layer appears as an "artificial mask of self-control, of compulsive, insincere politeness and of artificial sociality" (Reich, 1961, p. 204). This socially adjusted façade is used to cover up the middle layer of distorted, life-denying drives, thereby securing one's safe place within a society that does not understand these stress responses. This mechanism allows people to 'fit in,' despite the enormous personal (and social) costs of doing so. Although this surface layer is often unstable, for many people, this is our primary level of relating in the world. As I heard from other travelers throughout my travels around the world, Americans are notorious for this banality. This may explain the epidemic of loneliness and emptiness, or what many Americans experience as depression, in addition to the deep-seated rage that many Americans experience as violence. Rather than face the underlying dysfunction, huge resources go into treating and medicating people so that they will not feel what lies beneath. Because we have been indoctrinated that 'what lies beneath' is inherently bad, we are taught to manufacture 'good.' Just today, as I was sitting in the park, I heard a father say to his crying son several times, "don't throw a fitbe a good boy." No one has quite explained to me what makes sadness and anger 'bad,' and happiness and affection 'good' ­ these emotions all seem to be simply responses to life experience.

Thanks to our socially-adjusted peripheral drives, most of us go about our business as though everything is fine, although on some level, we know, feel and experience that it is not. We cannot help but recognize that so many individuals are lost, confused, blasé, apathetic, depressed, cynical, violent, perverse, and dangerous. Though civilization tends to treat individuals suffering from such symptoms with very little compassion ­ instead we tend to incarcerate, involuntarily hospitalize, medicate, or stigmatize such individuals ­ these symptoms stem from a fundamental dis-ease which can be identified and treated. These individuals are sick with an illness that permeates our culture, infecting children in epidemic proportions.

It is amazing, then, that in a world constantly threatened by war, violence, bigotry and ecological destruction, we can still get through our daily lives at all. Yet most of us do, or at least we try to with all our energy. Socialized into a world that forces us to inhibit and repress our basic physiological and emotional impulses ­ our core drives ­ we are forced to live according to our secondary and peripheral drives. The inability to access and live according to our primary drives, and our subsequent anxiety associated with such inability, lead us to displace
previously softer and more pleasure-oriented forms of social living. As parents, such deprived humans would adopt or develop various forms of pedagogy designed, at the basic level, to deprive or deny their own children the physical body pleasures they themselves were denied, and could no longer experience due to chronic armoring. While parents, priests, shamans, and various obstetricians and 'mental health specialists' the world over give high-sounding excuses for inflicting pain and trauma on infants and children, and for crushing their sexuality, in reality they are all acting out disguised and rationalized feelings rooted in their own pleasure-deprived and frozen emotional structures. (DeMeo, 1998, p. 38).
As much as we try to live in defense of our normalcy and denial of our social distress, the increasing numbers of criminals, victims of violence, mentally and physically ill, and war-related casualties are the testimony to a diseased civilization (Bloom & Reichert, 1998; Hall, 2002; Karr-Morse & Wiley, 1997; Yablonsky, 1972). This transgenerational, worldwide phenomenon of trauma and violence is the modern era's greatest crisis.

Traumatologists use the term 'traumatogenic forces' to define the prevalence of secondary drives within civilized societies. Even more, some theorists contend that our civilization is organized around these life-denying forces.
In the jargon of trauma theory, traumatogenic forces are those social practices and trends that cause, or contribute to the generation of traumatic acts.[In] attachment theory, for example, certain conditions generate optimal infant development. In particular, nurturance from adult caregivers is critical for mental, emotional, and social development. But in a culture where parenting is not an activity supported by the society, parents must do it as a hobby or a forced necessity and find time for nurturing only after basic bread and butter needs have been satisfied, if at all. When the culture fails to support the work of parents, a traumatogenic force is created that fosters the neglect of children's attachment needs. The organization of society may support or mitigate the individual's experience of crippling psychological trauma. (Bloom & Reichert, 1998, p. 18)
Such destructive social forces manifest directly from this secondary layer, where the impulses to nurture and care for infants and children become lost and distorted. An example of such distortion is the use of corporal punishment. When violence is modeled as the acceptable means to regulate the child or household environment, the child learns to do the same. 'Acting out' in school or social settings might be a child's cry for help, unable to properly regulate themselves due to "a faulty instruction book" (A. Kelly, personal communication, 2002). Instead of meeting force with force through punishment in school and more beatings at home, or medicating the child, understanding the immense harm done to children growing up amidst violence might help our society treat children without denying the reality of their abusive situations. In fact, such an understanding might validate the child's rational fear response and enable him to understand his place as an innocent victim of cruel treatment.

If we examine civilization through a trauma-sensitive lens, we see how embedded tramatogenic forces condoning the use of violence as a means for control are within our ideological, political, and religious social systems (Bloom & Reichert, 1998, p. 9). Establishing a society oriented around traumatogenic forces creates a hopeless and dangerous cycle of oppression. This cycle, with its power inequities and inherent brutality, has long been a cultural norm in our civilization. Traumatogenic forces "can have long-term organizing effects on personality and on attributional and relationship styles. They form the matrix for a powerful 'story' for the self and other, through enactments and re-enactments of the original experience" (Bentovim, 1992, p. 26). These life-denying dynamics profoundly effect the way we construct meaning and reality, especially in relation to traumatic events (Bentovim, 1992). For instance, in American culture, we do not acknowledge let alone challenge the foundations of our 'American Dream' story based on the theft and ecological destruction of other people's lands, the genocide and slavery of Native Americans and Africans, the use of terrorism in the American Revolution and other conflicts, the support of violence through such means as the death penalty and easy access to guns and violent media, and child-rearing practices that permit and encourage harmful environments for our youth. American culture can be dissected in order to illuminate the myriad of life-denying forces which ultimately work against a society's best intentions for growth, prosperity and peace, and for a system which entitles a small minority of privileged people to a disproportionate share of the wealth, resources and security.

Though we are expected not to challenge these basic inequities, the effects of living in a trauma-based society are devastating. As we are witnessing in 21st Century America, this disorganized state threatens ecological disaster, geopolitical stability and even basic human survival. If one agrees with Reich that "state structure is determined by family structure" (DeMeo, 1998, p. 22), the tragedy of our social crisis makes more sense.
For American children, the gestation of violence takes root primarily in the home. When trauma or neglect happens early in life and is left untreated, the injuries sustained reverberate to all ensuing developmental stages.When we look closely at the families of violent children across classes and racial differences, we find an impoverishment of human connectedness, trust, support, and emotional nurturing. People feel angry and alienated ­ often for several generations. There is a sense of separateness; a chronic irritability; an absence of optimism, joy, and knowing how to laugh; and a need to numb against hopelessness. (Karr-Morse & Wiley, 1997, pp. 160-161; 271)
By contextualizing our social problems in this way, we might actually be able to treat the root issues instead of attending to never-ending symptoms.

The symptoms of our greater disease, though, are not to be ignored or belittled. These symptoms, including depression, eating disorders and even schizophrenia, are exposing our dysregulated internal systems. They are the voices of our suffering, calling out to us to acknowledge the underlying disturbance (Allen, 1995; Bloom & Reichert, 1998; Maslow, 1968; et al.). Since most suffering individuals have long lost their ability to respond to pain, fear and discomfort, they are unable to ask for help, or even recognize they are in need. Thus, symptoms are the body's way of crying out for help.
It seems quite clear that personality problems may sometimes be loud protests against the crushing of one's psychological bones, of one's true inner nature. What is sick then is not to protest while this crime is being committed. And I am sorry to report my impression that most people do not protest under such treatment. They take it and pay years later, in neurotic and psychosomatic symptoms of various kinds, or perhaps in some cases never become aware that they are sick, that they have missed true happiness, true fulfillment of promise, a rich emotional life, and a serene, fruitful old age, that they have never known how wonderful it is to be creative, to react aesthetically, to find life thrilling. (Maslow, 1968, p. 8)
As implied above, symptoms are an individual's primary impulses striving towards creative expression. Just as a wildflower will make its appearance even through the tiniest of cracks in the thick concrete of the sidewalk, so too will organic life express and emote itself, however distorted, through the tiniest cracks in the thick armor of our characters. "All reactions to stress and trauma, including 'symptoms,' are best understood as adaptive efforts" (Allen, 1995, p. 25). The primary impulses of an organism are biologically oriented to grow towards life, and when thwarted from doing so, they will grow even still, yet distorted, as the secondary drives. Expressing one's self in this way is not a choice per se ­ most individuals are not malingering or looking for handouts (a perspective long held when treating distressed individuals which displays the secondary drive's use of rationalizations, denying the painful reality of human trauma and suffering) ­ but becomes a necessary ingredient for one's survival.

A session with a client suggests the pattern. Richard comes from a working class, religious family. His mother "yells too much" and has extreme mood swings, while his father, a recovering alcoholic and retired policeman, isolates himself. As a mid-twenties college student, Richard has struggled with alcohol and drug abuse. He is presently struggling with anxiety, paranoia, low self-esteem, and depression. He has also suffered for years from obesity, diabetes, intestinal complaints, and learning disabilities. His five siblings struggle with these same issues. During one session, when discussing his family dynamics, I asked Richard if he was ever beaten or abused. "No," he replied. Based on what Richard had already told me about the dynamics within his family, I had a hunch otherwise. Only a few minutes later, he began detailing for me the discipline and punishment methods in his family. He had a clear memory of a punishment routine: One of the children had done something "wrong," and his angry father would command the accused child to lie down still on the bed, with his or her pants down. His father would make the slow walk over to his closet, pick a belt off a certain peg, and walk back to the awaiting child ­ to Richard, time crawled at a snail's pace as his father made this journey. The father then proceeded to "hit" the child. When I asked Richard his feelings about this memory, he replied straightforwardly that "it helped put me on the straight and narrow" and that it "taught me discipline." He added, "of course, it could turn out the other way, like it did for my twin sister"; the sister is now an alcoholic, in and out of jail, and has lost custody of her two young children. He then remembered that the other kids ­ the ones who were not being beaten ­ would cry, "Daddy, please don't hit him. Please stop!" The father would not listen, and he would go on inflicting his punishment. Isn't it strange, Richard pondered, that his father could go ahead with this punishment with these other kids crying for him to stop. "I couldn't do that, I'm too weak."

The content of this frightfully typical story is not why I chose to share this clinical experience, it is the fact that Richard neglected to call such treatment beating or abuse. Moreover, he determined that it was good for him, teaching him "discipline," and putting him on the "straight and narrow." Although he said he hopes he will not treat his children in the same way, he believes in the same kind of discipline. Yet, in his mid-twenties, Richard cannot relax, thinks badly of "unproductive" people, constantly feels overwhelmed and stressed-out, demands order in his environment, has trouble living in the present, organizes his life around future plans, and is terrified of "losing it" and "letting myself go." Interestingly, Richard is trained in martial arts, is drawn to all kinds of dangerous situations, and is committed to becoming a policeman, just like his father.

Like Richard, we depend on our familial and social bonds for our very survival. We adhere to the conditions of external socialization without ever acknowledging the price we paid for the preservation of such bonds. According to Richard, his father's ritualistic beatings were "good for me." He has no reason to believe otherwise. Richard has long since lost direct contact with his bodily and emotional feelings and thus cannot understand all the debilitating symptoms he has been struggling with for so long. In some ways, even though he does acknowledge his struggle, it has been like this for so long that, in his own words, "it's just the way I will always be." This cognitive script does not emerge from a void. No matter how well Richard or other children justify their parents' and/or society's cruel treatment of them, such self-organizing principles are based on traumatic experiences that fundamentally denied the needs of children. Therefore, it is not necessarily a single or specific trauma that creates long-term debilitating effects for an individual, it is the entire environment (familial, social, global) which maintains the traumatogenic forces that abuse and repress children (Levine, 1997). This environment sends the message that children must be something different than they are, something better, and through such punitive measures, forces them to adapt to whatever this better is; although of course this 'better' is always impossible to achieve, since it is a concept divorced from the reality of the child and our world (P. Collins, personal communication, 2002).

Depending on the degree of such powerlessness, children, and later as adults, express their suffering in various ways. Unfortunately, not enough childhood trauma survivors recognize their suffering as being caused by trauma and begin their process of healing. Many childhood survivors grow up to be docile, obedient victims, vulnerable to other perpetrators of violence. Other childhood survivors grow up to be perpetrators themselves, emulating their parents' behaviors, acting out their shame, anger and violent revenge upon other individuals ­ usually not those who originally afflicted violence upon them ­ unable to understand the origins of such hatred (Hall, 2002, p. 9). Inevitably, this unconscious, compulsive pattern causes individuals to manifest symptoms either as helpless victims or threatening perpetrators. All around us, we see the evidence of this in the physical, emotional, mental, and social distress of individuals and our civilization. However, due to our inability to see the actual etiology and consequences of such distress, many believe our suffering is caused by genetic inheritance or sin.

The nature of our traumatogenic civilization has serious, far-reaching consequences on our human development. Although we are certainly not programmed to be evil, they cycle of individual and social distress may over time alter human neurodevelopment, which will inevitably affect all of our lives. "Perhaps the most disturbing implication from the research on the brain's adaptation to chronic fear and anger is the growing evidence that it may be altering the course of human evolution. Not only can the changes in hormone levels be permanent in an individual's lifetime, the altered chemical profile may actually become encoded in the genes and passed on to new generations, which may become successively more aggressive" (Karr-Morse & Wiley, 1997, pp. 174). Based on this alarming trend, if we wish to combat such scourges as violence, abuse, trauma, ecological destruction and war, we must acknowledge the traumatogenic environment we call civilization. "Increased rates of child abuse and other forms of unpredictable and uncontrollable trauma in our culture mean that more and more children are having this experience. Dr. [Bruce] Perry calls this process, along with its growing social implications, 'devolution'" (Karr-Morse & Wiley, 1997, pp. 174). Unable to touch one another, contracted, isolated, afraid, and anxious of human relationships, we are passing down to succeeding generations a legacy of disconnection, destruction, and inevitably, devolution of the human race.

The rebellion of the masses may, in fact, be the transition to some new, unexampled organization of humanity, but it may also be a catastrophe of human destiny. There is no reason to deny the reality of progress, but there is to correct the notion that believes this progress secure. It is more in accordance with facts to hold that there is no certain progress, no evolution, without the threat of 'involution', of retrogression. (Gasset, 1951, p. 56)

Current research is illuminating the devastating effects of trauma on the developing child, in its various forms of abuse, neglect, and oppression. "A rapidly accumulating body of scientific knowledge now supports the reality of a self-perpetuating cycle of violence that originates in the hurts ­ great and small ­ that we inflict on each other from childhood, through adolescence, and into adult life. We are beginning to understand, in fact, that virtually all of our human systems are organized around trauma and the prolonged, transgenerational, and often permanent, effects of traumatic experience" (Bloom & Reichert, 1998, p. 2).

The first clear observations of the harmful effects trauma has on children , and subsequently on society, came in the form of the infamous primate studies by Harry Harlow. In order to determine the significance of the mother-infant attachment, Harlow spent some twenty years experimenting with rhesus monkey infants. These monkey babies were routinely deprived of their mothers and isolated, and even abused and tortured. What he found was startling, and haunting. When the monkey babies were traumatized either through torture or isolation, their whole beings went into contraction, and all sorts of behavioral, emotional, physical, and sexual disturbances were observed. As adults, the abused and/or neglected rhesus monkeys displayed an intolerance towards intimacy of any kind, especially pleasurable body contact (DeMeo, 1998, p. 82).

These monkey infants grew to be brutally violent, sadistic, masochistic, anxious, depressed and/or alienated adult monkeys. When placed with other monkeys, these traumatized adults could not function normally in relation to the others, including their mates and babies. Tragically, the effects of such deprivation and abuse were viciously transmitted onto their children. These findings provide important information in understanding the etiology of later-stage adult symptoms, which many trauma theorists, including myself, contend are nothing more than post-traumatic stress symptoms; or failed efforts to adapt to a traumatogenic environment.

This is more blatantly demonstrated when considering Harlow's experiments with what he referred to as 'monster mothers.' Harlow's own account of these experiments is chilling (and makes me wonder about his own childhood and traumatic history).
The first of these monsters was a cloth monkey who, upon schedule or demand would eject high pressure compressed air. It would blow the animal's skin practically off its body. What did the baby do? It simply clung tighter and tighter to its mother at all costsWe built another monster mother that would rock so violently that the baby's head and teeth would rattle. All the baby did was cling tighter and tighter to the surrogate. The third monster we built had an embedded wire frame within its body, which would spring forward and eject the infant from its ventral surface. The infant would pick itself off the floor, wait for the frame to return into the cloth body, then cling again to the surrogate. Finally we built our porcupine mother. This mother would eject sharp spikesAlthough the infants were distressed by these pointed rebuffs, they simply waited until the spikes receded and then returned and clung to the mother. (Harlow as quoted http://www.vegans.org.uk/viv-harlow.html)
Even though these monkey mothers were cold, hard, inanimate, and severely punishing, the infants immediately responded by renewing close contact with their surrogate mothers. Similarly, a study with rat pups showed that when raised in environments where their surrogate maternal contact came with electrical shocks, the rats continued to shock themselves, knowing this was the consequence of maintaining contact with their 'mothers.' Even more horrifying was that when these rat pups, who had been isolated in cages, had their cage doors opened and were free to leave, they remained, continuing to shock themselves in contact with their 'mothers.' When the rats were coerced by the clinicians to leave their cages, many died. Others displayed signs of severe physiological distress (Sapolsky, 1994, pp. 217-222).

These experiments show how essential it is for the survival and well-being of infants to have dependable, safe, and close contact from their caretakers. Even for infants that learned how harmful the effects of close contact with their 'mothers' was, having this contact was obviously worth suffering such consequences. For in reality, there is no choice. Prematurely separating from the mother means death, or at least extreme suffering and madness, and so infants justifiably choose life, in whatever difficult and harmful form it comes. This reflects the significance of the parent-child bond in humans. It also speaks to how we become 'trained' to maintain contact, without ever recognizing its dysfunction and harm, even when it is extremely damaging and leads to developmental dysfunction. Seen from a larger context, we can understand that living amongst destructive family environments creates the same options as living amongst a destructive culture. "The violence of civilization provides us with two options. We can distance ourselves from the world of experience, sense, and emotion, or we can die" (Jensen, 2000, p. 122).

A friend of mine adopted a boy when he was 3_ years old. Up to this point, the boy had spent the first years of his life in an orphanage. There were caretakers and nurses on duty, but at any one time there were hundreds of children to only several attendants. Despite how they felt about the children in their charge, there were simply not enough adults to tend to all the children. Infants spent days in their cribs, untouched. They were routinely fed, washed, and clothed, but there was absolutely minimal human contact, and most likely no physical affection. When my friend went to meet her son for the first time, he suffered so terribly from eczema that he had leathery, reptile-like scales covering his entire body. As my friend put it, he had literally developed armor to protect him from the cold, uncaring world around him. While in the orphanage, his caretakers took aversion to his skin condition and left him alone and untouched even more. Although a protective mechanism for survival, the young child's armor also served to isolate him from the loving affection he so desperately needed; the lack of which caused the development of such severe eczema in the first place. As the boy grew up, my friend realized that her son was lost within that armor; that there seemed to be no way out, even among a loving family. The eczema cleared up, but emotionally he would not trust or open to another human being. During those most influential early years, the damage was done. My friend struggled to raise him in the best way she possibly could, but eventually, after years of difficulty in school, at home, with peers, and in most social settings, he was diagnosed with Attachment Disorder. At this point, the mental health industry will treat such an individual, but unfortunately for the individual, the family, and our society, such treatment is minimally successful. Individuals suffering with Attachment Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and other Axis II personality disorders often show little progress. Moreover, like the boy's eczema and the caretakers' subsequent aversion, these suffering individuals are frequently difficult clients for therapists which often recreates a harsh relationship within the therapeutic encounter, further reinforcing the client's belief in themselves as worthless and bad. As adults, they must suffer the indignities and struggles of being sick and troubled individuals, many believing they are this way due to chemical imbalances or hereditary abnormalities.

We need parents or caretakers to survive. In a bizarre application of this understanding, marketing consultant Faith Popcorn suggested that the toy industry design a doll that reminds children of their mothers. "We have so many latchkey children in search of human connection. They'll be able to carry their mother around in doll form!" ("Tomorrow's Child," 1998, p. 54). Children do not just need parents or surrogates physically present, they need living, human beings that care for them and that are an active part of their growth process. Children require healthy, supportive relationships with their caretakers, from their earliest experiences. Imprinting, recognized as essential in animals, is just as essential in humans. We can look at the earliest years of our childhood in a similar way that we look at the first seconds in the life of a baby goose. Immediately after birth, the baby goose becomes imprinted on the first nearby object it recognizes, which is usually the mother. This initiates a relationship that entails the gosling following the mother everywhere in order to learn what it is to be a goose. Our human beginning is just the same:
The provision for this [imprinting] in the continuum of events is an essential prerequisite to the smooth succession of stimuli and responses that follows as mother and baby begin their life together. If the imprinting is prevented from taking place, if the baby is taken away when the mother is keyed to caress it, to bring it to her breast, into her arms and into her heart, or if the mother is too drugged to experience the bonding fully, what happens? (Liedloff, 1985, p. 59)
Without an adequately formed and integrated representation of what it means, feels, and looks like to be a human being, we will spend the rest of our lives struggling with the human experience. Unlike the gosling, in the developing child this imprinting process covers years and necessitates a more dedicated effort from the parents and society (Liedloff, 1985, pp. 58-60). As the research findings have so patently demonstrated, this foundational relationship ­ with such life-affirming qualities as parental bonding, touch, affection, empathy, trust ­ is essential for our health and well-being and has a long-term impact on our development (Bloom & Reichert, 1998; Briere, 1992; Karr-Morse & Wiley, 1997; Liedloff, 1985; Sapolsky, 1994). As illustrated by my friend's son, emotional malnourishment affects the entire organism, in often terrifying and harmful ways. "Separate a baby rat from its mother and its growth hormone levels plummet; growth stops. Allow it contact with its mother while she is anesthetized, and growth hormone is still low. Mimic active licking by the mother by stroking the rat pup in the proper pattern, and growth normalizes.The same seems to apply to humans" (Sapolsky, 1994, pp. 95). When developing amidst environments of abuse, neglect and/or isolation, human children are chronically stressed, chronically unfulfilled, and prone to the same mental, physical, and sexual disturbances observed in the maternally-deprived monkey children. Neuropsychologist James Prescott (1975) proposes that there is a direct correlation between the deprivation of pleasure (particularly during early childhood) and the level of violence and warfare.

In a well-known story which grabbed media attention several years back, two premature infant twins, Brielle and Kyrie Jackson, each weighing two pounds at birth, were struggling for their lives in incubators in a Massachusetts hospital. Brielle's status was rapidly decreasing ­ she was unrelentingly crying, having difficulty breathing, and her skin color was alarmingly blue. A nurse, at her wits end, picked up Kyrie, whose health had stabilized, and put her into the incubator next to her twin sister Brielle. Kyrie snuggled up against her sister and put her tiny arm over her ailing sister's shoulder. Rapidly, Brielle's health stabilized ­ she stopped crying, her blood-oxygen saturation level increased, and her skin color returned to its normal pinkish hue. "We readily think of stressors as consisting of various unpleasant things that can be done to an organism. Sometimes a stressor can be the failure to provide something for an organism, and the absence of touch is seemingly one of the most marked of developmental stressors that we can suffer" (Sapolsky, 1994, p. 97). It is amazing how responsive and resilient individuals become when other human beings, or even animals, simply make physical contact.

The touching resilience of the Jackson sisters ushered in similar stories of families, especially parents, initiating close physical contact with their ailing infants and to their surprise, observing amazing recoveries. Susan Ludington, professor of maternal and child health nursing at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, claims that "everybody in the world knows you can take a crying baby and pick him up and he'll stop crying. You put him down he starts crying again. Babies, and they give us the message quite clearly, prefer to be held. Now we're just finding out that when they are held, there are all these tremendous physiological benefits" (as quoted in http://www.snopes.com/glurge/hug.htm). Indeed, our children do give us their message quite clearly, but even with the enormous scientific evidence we have collected in order to understand the function of their screams and tears, many of us still do not respond appropriately.

In Derrick Jensen's book, A Language Older Than Words, he documents case after case of horrific things humans have done to other human beings, animals and the environment, in the name of knowledge, mastery, and domination. At one point, Jensen asks, "What does a person do with this kind of information? How do you grapple with the knowledge that, in the pursuit of data ­ and ultimately in an attempt to make ourselves 'lords and possessors of nature' ­ members of our culture will give electric shocks to kittens and will mercilessly torture dogs? It seems impossible to form an adequate response" (2000, p. 23). This is crucial in understanding our individual and social distress: we cannot form an "adequate response" because from our earliest experiences, we were coerced, threatened, and ultimately trained not to respond based on our primary feelings. As Julian Beck once said, "If we could really feel, the pain would be so great that we would stop all the suffering" (as cited in Bloom & Reichert, 1998, p. 31).

Through such 'learned helplessness,' we have lost our ability to use our sensory intelligence as a way of discerning and guiding our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. We have lost our ability to respond to life suffering. Renowned traumatologist Bessel van der Kolk, observed, "The lack or loss of self-regulation is possibly the most far-reaching effect of psychological trauma in both children and adults" (1996, p. 187). One of the most significant outcomes of a loss of self-regulatory drives, and subsequent reliance on secondary drives, is that such individuals will establish a society organized against a human's natural instincts to grow and develop. This organization will set in place structures fundamentally operating in opposition to an individual's best interests, thereby perpetuating patterns denying children access to their primary impulses. This is the downward spiral of violence and oppression: the cycle of devolution [See Figure 1].

No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom. It is contrary to the very nature of man. (Mahatma Gandhi)

From the earliest moments of our birth, even though we may live within a family surrounded by empathy and compassion, we experience a world that is fragmented and trauma-inducing. Living amidst such disconnection and violence, it is indeed tempting for us to write this off as 'human nature': Humans are born evil, or genetically predisposed to violence, and therefore we must live with the consequences; our best recourse is to develop pedagogical and rehabilitative methods which guarantee 'law and order.' This is what we have done. But by using religious, philosophical, ideological, and now psychological justifications to explain why human