Did a traumatic childhood make Putin heartless? [MindSiteNews.org]

Hello!

I am worried about this blog, with all my respect to your attempts to understand Putin's personality. My worries are two-fold. One is an attempt to apply causality to one's personality development. Stating that someone's traumatic childhood experience can make one heartless is quite a deterministic stretch, in my view. Does that also mean that someone with no trauma (whatever is a definition of trauma and even if we accept your definition) is immune against heartlessness?

I understand that the ACE ideas are very deterministic, but it feels strange to read the blog transmitting so much certainty about the phenomenon to which alternative explanations may exist.

More concerning is a lack of cultural context in deciding that Putin's childhood was "laden with ACEs". How was the housing decided to be "inadequate"? Inadequate by whose/what standards? Who diagnosed his parents with depression?

By establishing such a questionable and unsupported, in my opinion, causality, we basically free Putin from any responsibility for his actions and assign the responsibility to circumstances in his childhood. We also suggest that the millions of children born to Soviet parents in 1940s, 1950s, 1960s - those who had comparable to Putin's childhood (living in communal apartments with no bathtubs and hot water (referring to your previous blog), not having much money, with parents working long hours, with neighbors feeding and watching each other children - are bound to be heartless. Is that what the blog is saying?

Respectfully,

Marina Bluvshtein, PhD