Derrida’s Sauf le nom (Post-Scriptum) begins with a look at apophatic theology (negative theology) and Augustine’s Confessions.  Apophatic theology is the idea that we approach God, not through attribution (e.g., God is all-powerful), but through questioning and negation [“Meister Eckhart cites him often; he often cites the ‘without’ of Saint Augustine, that quasi-negative predication of the singular without concept, for example: ‘God is wise without wisdom, good without goodness, powerful without power (Derrida, Sauf le nom, 40).”]  Augustine raises the question, for instance, of why to confess to God who already knows everything, and relates it to the fact that he does so publicly in writing so as an act of love stirring up the love of his readers. 

Could an example of the singular without a concept be Nietzsche’s notion of “that which does not kill me makes me stronger” which disrupts the psychological “narrative” of a causal unconscious? So, for example, if we imagine triplets growing up in an abusive home, one might get severe ptsd, the next is unaffected, and the third is stronger for it. Are there other good examples of how common psychological narratives fail to address individual nuance in phenomena in psychology?

Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous aphorism from Twilight of the Idols (1889)—”That which does not kill me makes me stronger” (often translated from the German “Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker”)—can indeed be seen as disrupting common psychological narratives around a “causal unconscious,” particularly those rooted in deterministic models like Freudian psychoanalysis or trauma-focused theories.

The “causal unconscious” here refers to the idea that unconscious processes (e.g., repressed memories, drives, or early experiences) mechanistically determine psychological outcomes, often in a linear, predictable way—such as abuse inevitably leading to pathology via unconscious mechanisms. Nietzsche’s notion, by contrast, emphasizes active interpretation and will-to-power: adversity isn’t a passive cause of weakness but an opportunity for self-overcoming, where the individual reframes suffering to foster growth.

This challenges the determinism of unconscious causality by introducing agency, resilience, and variability—suffering doesn’t cause strength or weakness inherently; it’s how one responds that matters.  The example with the triplets in an abusive home illustrates this disruption perfectly. In a causal unconscious framework (e.g., Freudian or modern trauma models like those in PTSD research), the shared abusive environment might be seen as a uniform “cause” imprinting unconscious trauma, leading to predictable outcomes like dissociation or hypervigilance for all. Yet, as I described:

• One develops severe PTSD (aligning with the narrative: unconscious repression manifests as symptoms).
• One remains unaffected (defying causality: no apparent unconscious impact).
• One emerges stronger (Nietzschean twist: adversity as a catalyst for empowerment, perhaps through conscious reframing or innate resilience).

This variability highlights how the same stimulus can yield divergent results, undermining oversimplified cause-effect chains. Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, echoes this by quoting Nietzsche during his Holocaust experiences: suffering strengthened his logotherapy approach, where meaning-making overrides deterministic unconscious forces. Not all survive or thrive from trauma, but it exposes the nuance missing in rigid narratives.

Psychology often relies on broad narratives for explanatory power, but these can oversimplify complex, multifaceted phenomena, leading to fallacies like reductionism (boiling down to one cause), overgeneralization (applying to all cases), or binary thinking (either/or outcomes).   Pop psychology exacerbates this by distilling ideas into memes or self-help tropes, ignoring individual, cultural, or contextual variations.

Below are several well-documented examples, drawn from critiques in psychological literature and philosophy:

1. Attachment Theory and Adult Relationships: John Bowlby’s attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized) are often narrated as causally determined by early childhood experiences, predicting lifelong relational patterns. However, this fails nuance: not all insecurely attached children become dysfunctional adults—resilience factors like therapy, supportive later relationships, or cultural contexts can intervene. For instance, longitudinal studies show only moderate correlations, with many “anxiously attached” individuals thriving due to agency, challenging the deterministic unconscious imprinting.

This mirrors our triplets: same early environment, divergent outcomes.

2. Nature vs. Nurture in Intelligence or Personality: The narrative often pits genetics (nature) against environment (nurture) as binary causes, e.g., “IQ is mostly hereditary” or “trauma shapes personality entirely.” Yet, epigenetics and gene-environment interactions reveal nuance: genes may predispose, but expression depends on context. Twin studies show identical twins raised apart can differ markedly in traits like extroversion due to subtle environmental variances, disrupting oversimplified causal stories.

3. Cognitive Distortions and Depression: Aaron Beck’s cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) model posits negative thought patterns (e.g., all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization) as primary causes of depression, treatable by reframing.

While helpful, this narrative oversimplifies by ignoring biological (e.g., neurochemical), social (e.g., poverty), or existential factors. For example, assuming “just think positive” fixes depression denies cases where systemic oppression or grief play roles, leading to victim-blaming.

4. The Narrative Fallacy in Trauma and Resilience: Similar to Nietzsche’s disruption, the “trauma always scars” narrative (e.g., in PTSD models) assumes adverse events causally embed unconscious wounds leading to inevitable dysfunction.

Yet, post-traumatic growth research shows many emerge stronger, as in Holocaust survivors or abuse victims who become advocates. This fails nuance by ignoring protective factors like social support or meaning-making, akin to conspiracy theories that oversimplify blame to one cause.

These examples underscore how psychological narratives, while useful heuristics, risk fallacy when rigid—echoing Derrida’s deconstruction of stable categories or Plato’s warnings against isolated kinds in naming phenomena. They often prioritize simplicity for therapy or media appeal but overlook the relational, variable traits of psychological objects.

Kierkegaard

Maybe the point is to restore weight to the individual with Kierkegaard, who disrupted the concept universalizing the individual by writing in pseudonyms. Serving in Viet Nam may increase the likelihood of a soldier suffering from ptsd, but the mere fact of serving tells us nothing of whether a specific soldier will suffer anything. Similarly, tossing a coin 1000 times will result in a 50/50 probability of heads vs tails, but tells us nothing about what the individual result of toss number 4 will be.

This point resonates deeply with Søren Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy, which indeed seeks to “restore weight to the individual” by prioritizing subjective, lived experience over objective, universal abstractions. In works like The Sickness Unto Death (1849) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), Kierkegaard critiques the Hegelian tendency to subsume the particular under the general, arguing that true existence is irreducibly individual—marked by anxiety, choice, and passion—rather than reducible to statistical probabilities or causal laws. Science (including psychology) excels at describing aggregates or “crowds,” but it falters when applied to the singular “I,” where objective knowledge gives way to subjective truth. Our examples illustrate this perfectly: while aggregate data might show a heightened PTSD risk among Vietnam veterans (e.g., studies indicate rates around 15-30% for lifetime prevalence), it reveals nothing about whether a specific soldier—shaped by their unique inwardness, resilience, or “leap” toward meaning—will suffer, thrive, or remain unchanged. Similarly, the coin toss analogy highlights the fallacy of conflating probabilistic trends (nomothetic knowledge) with individual outcomes (idiographic reality); the 50/50 split over 1,000 tosses is a mathematical abstraction, but toss #4 is an existential event, unpredictable in its singularity because it is causall unconnected to previous or subsequent tosses.  This Kierkegaardian emphasis disrupts common psychological narratives by exposing their overreliance on deterministic or probabilistic models, which often erase the individual’s agency and context in favor of generalized “causes.” It aligns with our earlier discussions: Nietzsche’s aphorism empowers the individual to interpret adversity actively, rather than passively succumbing to an unconscious causal chain, while Derrida’s deconstruction of naming reveals how labeling phenomena (e.g., “PTSD” as a fixed category) defers the unnameable nuance of personal experience.

In psychology, this calls for a shift from purely quantitative, population-level approaches to more qualitative, person-centered ones—like narrative therapy or existential psychotherapy, which honor the subjective “weight.”  To build on our examples, here’s how Kierkegaard’s individual-centric view highlights failures in nuanced address within psychology:

• PTSD and Trauma Response Variability: As we note with Vietnam service, epidemiological data (e.g., from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study) establishes correlations—increased exposure to combat raises PTSD odds—but individual factors like pre-existing temperament, social support, or personal meaning-making (Kierkegaard’s “subjective appropriation”) determine outcomes. One soldier might spiral into despair (the “sickness unto death”), another find redemptive purpose, defying the narrative of trauma as a universal scar. This echoes the triplets scenario: the “same” abuse yields divergent paths because psychology’s causal models undervalue the individual’s existential choices.
• Probability in Mental Health Risk Factors: Extending our coin toss, consider addiction narratives. Genetics and environment might predict a 50% heritability for alcoholism in populations, but for a specific person, it’s not fate—it’s interwoven with their subjective decisions, anxieties, and leaps (e.g., choosing sobriety amid temptation). Twin studies often show this: monozygotic twins with identical risk profiles diverge, one developing addiction and the other not, underscoring Kierkegaard’s point that objective probabilities are “unscientific” for the existing individual.
• Anxiety as Existential vs. Pathological: Kierkegaard views anxiety not as a disorder to be probabilistically “caused” by biology or events (e.g., GAD models linking it to 60-70% genetic factors) but as the dizziness of freedom inherent to individual existence. Common narratives medicalize it as predictable (e.g., via serotonin imbalances), yet for a specific person, anxiety might propel growth (e.g., artistic creation) or paralysis, unpredictable by stats. Therapies like ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) nod to this by focusing on personal values over general cures.

In essence, Kierkegaard reminds us that while psychology’s objects of inquiry thrive on generalizations for practical utility, they risk alienating the individual—the true site of meaning. This doesn’t invalidate science but calls for humility: probabilities inform trends, but the singular self remains a mystery like the God of apophasis, much like Plato’s “not-being” or Derrida’s deferred trace in naming.