Intellectualization Results From Blocked Childhood Trauma | Daniel Mackler

From Daniel Mackler: “Intellectualization [is] when people use their intellect, their logic, their abstract reasoning to avoid having to deal with their feelings. You see this a lot in academics. I think about my time in college . . . so many of my professors talking and talking and talking and spinning out ideas and fancy words and thoughts, so many complex ideas, and I’d have to literally — just to be able to follow what they were saying — I would have to dissociate from my feelings to be able to make sense of it and follow the map of what they were creating. And when I think about it now, I realize [that] actually they were dissociated; if they weren’t dissociated, they couldn’t have done this. And actually all of this academic spinning and fancy talk and complex abstract ideas was a big defense against feeling anything. And I think it actually tells a lot about their childhood, their history — that they weren’t allowed to feel, they were blocked from their feelings.

This is what I’ve observed in people now in recent years who are very intellectualized — that they are quite split off from a deeper connection emotionally with themselves. And there was trauma in their lives — every single person I’ve seen who is like this — a history of painful trauma, rejection, violation, neglect; a world that didn’t allow them to emotionally be a full human being. But they were allowed to use their brains; they were allowed to be intellectual; they were allowed to have abstract reasoning and vocabulary and thought. This was something that was okay; the feelings, [the] connectedness with the truth of themselves, was not. They weren’t allowed to grieve, they weren’t allowed to cry, they weren’t allowed to be confrontational against the people who were blocking them. Often they were in worlds with parents who were also intellectualized. So that was allowed; the other parts were not. So a split happened, and they are reflecting that split. And often what I’ve seen [is] they can become very uncomfortable when people are cutting through the intellectualization and are just speaking truth, speaking emotional truth, having feelings can be very threatening to intellectualized people. It can actually make them become even more intellectualized, in that way, more defended.”

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