Very interesting points. I've spent all morning reflecting on your hypothesis that psychological trauma is merely a mechanism of comparing ourselves to others, and, ultimately, I find I have to disagree.

There are many factors that might prevent people from exhibiting symptoms of psychological trauma after an experience such as war, rape, or the death of a child, but that doesn't mean that there was no trauma associated with the event.

In less advanced (or wartorn, or famine-afflicted) societies, where children often die, it is not that the parents do not experience psychological pain at their death that they spend less time grieving or have a more matter-of-fact attitude about it. Just because children are dying all around you does not make the death of your own child any less painful. It's that their lives are an every-day struggle for survival. They can not afford the time and energy for grieving that we in relatively safe places with higher life expectancies tend to feel is necessary. But, not having been able to take the time to grieve and process their emotions about the event, their psychological trauma may manifest in other, seemingly minor ways for the rest of their lives.

I really object to the theory that children who are sexually abused only perceive the experience as trauma from an adult perspective, once they have learned that this is not an experience everyone goes through. This theory pretty much assumes on its face that there is nothing wrong with adult-child sexual relations; that we only dislike it for reasons of irrational, culturally-ingrained aversion. This is patently false. The core reason why we feel an aversion to the idea of adults using young people for sexual pleasure is because it is, fundamentally, an abuse of power that creates psychological trauma, not to mention physical pain and dysfunction for the victim. For a "subordinate" person to have his or her body overpowered by an older, "superior" person, is traumatic. Being controlled is traumatic. Having our individual will defeated is traumatic. Though people with differing constitutions have different ways of dealing with, or masking, this psychological trauma, and can take different amounts of time to do so, it does not change the fact of the underlying trauma. I would argue that in a society where child rape is the norm, individual victims will exhibit lifelong behaviors related to the experience of abuse, even if no one in the culture treats the abuse as legitimate abuse. For instance, they will grow up accepting that they have no power and are just pawns to be played with by those stronger and with greater authority. There will be a higher incidence of abusive marriages, non-sexual child abuse, elder abuse, and possibly suicide.

You bring up the difference between old people in nursing homes and young children in leukemia hospitals as an example to back up your theory. I think you are mistaken here, as well. Elderly people certainly suffer when their friends and loved ones die, just as parents suffer when their children die. It's just that there is an extra layer of regret and poignancy when a child dies, because she or he was at the beginning of their life and their death is a death of potential. Whereas, an older person who nears the end has presumably lived a full life and is dying at the biologically appropriate time.

I'd love to hear thoughts on these counterpoints.