Immanuel Kant and the Task of Understanding Another’s Lived-Experience

Professor Katie Harster has considered the phenomenon of psychological trauma, bringing philosophical understandings into play. She provides an informed account of observed “symptoms,” and associated treatments. I comment as a counseling psychologist, although I do not specialize in the evidence-based treatments that she describes. Usually, in my work with clients, we are trying to make sense of what has happened, with a concern for what might happen in the future. I am grateful therefore to colleagues who have the expertise that I lack. I recall a discussion with one of these colleagues, who suggested that, “If a house is on fire, your priority should be to put out the flames and you can worry about how it caught on fire sometime later.” A good point I thought, and this is supported by Harster’s account. I am stretching the analogy, but a traumatized person could be like that annoying faulty smoke alarm. It keeps going off even though there is no actual fire. When a person’s anxiety appears to be unwarranted, it is taken to be a symptom of mental illness. My colleagues measure anxiety, using standard rating scales, and interventions are considered evidence-based when they reduce scores on those measures. However, we know that removing the batteries from an annoying smoke alarm is not an adequate response. I observe below that anxiety can be positive and protective. I also observe that trauma can be so far off the scale of what we usually experience, that it will be difficult to make sense of what has happened, or to adjust to it. Harster describes how a Kantian framework supports pragmatic and stoic responses to trauma. This framework underpins certain areas of psychological theory and practice, in which it is suggested that we cannot trust our emotions, and we must turn instead to reason. I support this to a degree, but I am concerned that reason and symptom reduction will not always be enough. Harster describes how traumatized people can struggle with self-blame. How they lack a sense of self-worth and how they can lapse into extreme risk taking. Within that Kantian framework, it is assumed that there is something wrong with them. However, if we take time with them to explore what happened,