“Self-inflation is the rule in life,” wrote Robert Trivers; hence his conclusion that we fool ourselves so as better to fool others. This explains a lot of why smart folks truly believe in toxic stress, ACEs, and complex PTSD despite the obvious lack of scientific evidence.

If Brummer hadn’t blocked me, he would have received this: Wrong. It is a fight. “…on the science of psychological trauma, I suggest that refusing to place the debunking of science claims within the context of ideologies would be like bringing a knife to a gun fight. We are all in an ideology war now, whether you know it or not. You either get out in front of it or get steamrolled.” (The Body Does Not Keep the Score, 2025)

I accept your surrender. Are you implying that you’re not leftist progressive, or you’re just not neo-Marxist? Or, are you implying that individuals can hold those beliefs without it biasing their views of science? Sincere questions, because I always wonder if supporters of ACEs are pretending that neo-Marxist ideology is not influencing their views for debate purposes, or they honestly lack the framework to see how neo-Marxism encompasses their worldviews, or they’ve just been a bit naïve and haven't sat down and thought through the massive implications and biological problems in ACE theory.

One hundred percent of the dozens of ACEs studies have been cross-sectional. Relying on correlational data to support a causal theory is reckless. Cross-sectional studies are like anglerfish. If ACE theory is true, tell us, please, what’s the biological mechanism of how ACEs cause a horde of physical and mental conditions? A more plausible theory to explain why individuals who develop diseases as adults experienced stressful events in childhood is that many bad things do not happen at random in nature, but they are not causal of each other.

It is now abundantly clear that “trauma-informed approaches” (TIA) is one of the pillars that has conflated trauma with progressive ideology for the past generation of clinicians. Other pillars include complex PTSD, ACEs, toxic stress, “body keeps the score,” restorative justice, social emotional learning, and mother blaming. Each pillar has corrupted different aspects of research, public health, and clinic work. TIA is the pillar that sows the woke rubbish of DEI, intersectionality, critical race theory, and queer theory. “The intersection of different forms of oppression and discrimination, such as racism and migration status, is recognized by other authors as an important aspect of TIA...” (Burgund and Markovic, 2024).

This 79-second video sums it up. What is the purpose of diagnostic criteria?

People ask me, what’s the harm of trauma myths? This is the harm. Bruce Perry has influenced a generation of clinicians, teaching the first 2 months of life is a critical period to receive love or your neural development is permanently defective. He is untethered to evidence.

@SteveStuWill That’s capitalism. It has flaws but it’s the miracle largely responsible for our prosperity. I’m happy to do free reviews; I am not oppressed. I want publishers to make large profits. The focus should be on the quality of the science (i.e., progressive bias), not profits.

NEW Trauma Dispatch: City hires visionary architect who claims to use neuroscience for trauma recovery to end homelessness (Read time 1.5 minutes plus 51-second video). The program “is doomed to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on a plan that is guaranteed to fail.”

@JobbingPsych My pleasure. Thank you for a sincere question.

The harms are that public health policies based on reducing toxic stress (a) will fail, (b) will waste time, energy, and money, and (c) prolong a false understanding of human nature. “Toxic stress” is not useful for this purpose because it is neither a scientific term nor a validated construct; it was invented as a policy strategy by Jack Shonkoff and his co-conspirators at Harvard (They simultaneously invented tolerable stress and positive stress sans evidence to make it appear more authoritative. See my book “The Trouble With Trauma.”) Toxic stress and ACE activists conflated stress with life-threatening trauma ON PURPOSE to catapult their utopian, oppression-based crusades. Neglect, and the other alleged stressors (e.g., divorce, parent incarcerated) are unpleasant, but are NOT known causes for mental illness (Yes, one can point to associations in studies but those are 100% weak cross-sectional studies). The ACEs screenings in California have been criticized as useless shams. Life-threat traumas (not toxic stress) are the only events that are potentially worthwhile to target. We have made tremendous progress in the past century in passing laws against maltreatment and domestic violence, and public awareness of abuse without needing to invoke the fake construct of toxic stress. But there is only so much those efforts can achieve, and they have hit a wall (hence the moral panic of the Leftist activists who felt the need to invent a toxic stress crisis; see my book). The question is WHAT public policies can move us past that wall? No one has discovered the public health strategy to eradicate violence and child abuse. But toxic stress cannot provide the answer because there is no good evidence that childhood stress creates child abusers, batterers, and violent criminals (again, studies that show these associations are weak cross-sectional studies).

@Surgeon_General Goodbye, Coddler-in-Chief. Here’s hoping that you never hold a role of power in government again where you can fabricate crises and promote your progressive, neo-Marxist view of humans as fragile, oppressed victims.

RT @CJFerguson1111: A new article reviews The Anxious Generation...and how it got #socialmedia and teen #mentalhealth so wrong. Well done.…