Contact author:
William D. Morain, MD
515-784-8344
[email protected]
Did Mormon Founder Suffer from Effects of Childhood Trauma?
What behavioral patterns could one expect from an adult whose brutal
childhood traumas held themes of dismemberment, punishment, and worse? For
Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism, a religious superstructure of
narcissism may have evolved, with sexual and ritualistic features that
flowed directly from traumatic events. As child psychiatrist Lenore Terr,
MD, states, "A whole life can be shaped by an old trauma, remembered or
not."
Joseph suffered unspeakable pain as a seven-year-old child from a leg bone
infection and its surgical treatments without anesthesia. He survived as
the crippled middle child of an impoverished migrant family, retreating into
a fantasy world of violence, persecution, and revenge from which he never
completely emerged. As an adolescent, the sudden death of his beloved older
brother contributed bizarre bereavement fantasies to an already traumatized
psyche.
The Sword of Laban: Joseph Smith, Jr., and the Dissociated Mind examines
the Mormon prophet's enigmatic life in light of current understanding of
posttraumatic stress disorder and the dissociation that may accompany it.
The book's author, William D. Morain, MD traces the repetitive patterns of
behavior and fantasies of Smith's adult life. He demonstrates how the
horrifying real events of the surgeries combined with the developmental
phase-specific fantasies of a seven-year-old boy resulted in permanent
pathological distortion of Smith's entire early psychological growth and
development--with significant consequences for his subsequent adult
psychological functioning.
Dr. Morain's remarkable psychological study of Joseph Smith, Jr., has
appealed to a wide spectrum of readers--as a social history, religious
biography, an account of the dissociative elements in poetic and spiritual
genius, or simply a gripping portrait of an ill-fated and tragic man.
Michael R. Zales, MD, former president of the Group for Advancement of
Psychiatry, says of the book:
Well-researched, balanced, and respectfully and sensitively written, The
Sword of Laban describes how the overwhelmingly painful surgical operations
performed on a seven-year-old boy, followed later by the personally
traumatic death and exhumation of his beloved older brother, combined to
shape the psychology of the founder of Mormonism. Dr. Morain's graceful and
skillfully crafted history of a complex and troubled life provides unique
insights into the understanding of a creative genius and leader. As a
single case study, this biography is a major contribution to the
contemporary literature regarding the reaction of children and adolescents
to horrifying events.
The book's author, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, is a senior
plastic surgeon, writer, and editor. Drawing on his own experience in
caring for children in pain, Dr. Morain has combined his own observations
and those of experienced child psychiatrists in formulating a creative and
compelling clinical study of a troubled historical figure.
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