Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder is, at present, only a proposed diagnostic addition to the forthcoming DSM-V. Like PTSD (see my previous post) , PTED will, if included, probably apply to a person experiencing, witnessing or being directly confronted with a highly traumatic (though, unlike PTSD, not necessarily life-threatening) event or events (e.g., difficult divorce, major losses of significant others, serious illness, disability, physical or emotional abuse, etc.) leading to chronic (longer than three months minimally, but more realistically, I would recommend at least one year) feelings of embitterment, hostility, anger, resentment, irritability or rage, and the obsessive, sometimes compelling desire for revenge and retribution. I consider PTED fundamentally to be an anger disorder. As with most diagnosable mental disorders today, the degree of embitterment would need, by definition, to cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning. Garden-variety feelings of bitterness that commonly come and go with life's inevitable existential frustrations and disappointments are not enough to warrant this diagnosis. The embitterment level must, by definition, be excessive, pervasive, persisting and debilitating. Certainly one could make a case that the bitter, cold and hateful Ebenezer Scrooge, while an affluent and shrewd business man, demonstrates significant impairment in social and interpersonal functioning. On the DSM-IV-TR's Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) Scale, Scrooge might merit a mid-range score of about 55, based mainly on his long-standing impaired social functioning. Scrooge is a social loner, but not primarily due to extreme introversion. (See my prior post.) He has nothing but hostility and contempt for others and their problems. Psychodiagnostically, it could further be inferred that Scrooge exhibits traits of Schizoid, Narcissistic and Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, each of which, in my view, like PTED, also have their roots in repressed anger, resentment and rage. (See my prior posts on personality disorders.)

Emotionally wounded (much like Dickens, pictured here, himself had been during childhood) and unconsciously driven by traumatic losses as a child (Scrooge's mother died bringing him into the world) and rejection by his bereaved father (who blamed the poor boy for his mother's death), as a young and still vibrant man, Ebenezer takes a fateful decision to walk away from the woman he loves and who loves him, deliberately choosing instead a life devoted to business, commerce, materialism and money-making. He eventually becomes a wealthy, highly successful but deeply embittered man, totally alone and alienated from any and all intimate relationships, friends and family. His is a cynical, negative, jaded defensive posture, unconsciously motivated, it seems, by festering anger, rage, resentment and narcissistic wounding. Scrooge expresses an almost total lack of empathy or compassion for others. Or for humanity in general. He refuses to allow anyone to get emotionally close to him. presumably for fear of being once again abandoned or rejected, fending people off with his gruff, insensitive, selfish, humorless, crusty and hostile persona. Scrooge has forgotten how to play, laugh and how to love. (See my prior post.)  And to accept being loved. He has long ago lost touch with his authentic self, his so-called inner child, what in his therapy I might refer to as "little Ebenezer." (See my prior post.)

As psychotherapists see daily, the best defense is a good offense. And Scrooge, beneath his civilized, successful facade, is about as angry, irritable, irascible and offensive as it gets. Not outwardly enraged in the same way as a blatant and abusive "rageaholic." But, rather, Scrooge is a repressed, ostensibly well-mannered, respectable yet joyless and hard-hearted man whose unresolved core resentment and pervasive bitterness poison and cripple his whole personality. He dislikes everyone, and is universally disliked in return. His is a toxic character structure. He neither desires nor enjoys close relationships or warm family ties, always chooses solitary activities, takes little pleasure in anything but making (though not spending) money, seems indifferent to the criticism of others, and demonstrates emotional coldness, detachment and blunted affect, traits closely associated with Schizoid Personality Disorder. He is haughty in attitude, arrogant, self-centered, greedy, excessively devoted to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships, rigid, stubborn, stingy and exploitative of others, like his dedicated, long-suffering, good-natured but badly treated employee, Bob Cratchit. In short, Scrooge is a pathologically embittered man, and has been so for most of his adult life. Sadly, this "Scrooge syndrome" is not uncommon, and may be even more prevalent today than in Dickens' nineteenth-century England. It is comprised of a mixture of pathological narcissism, post-traumatic embitterment, and greed. In part, it is precisely this "Scrooge syndrome" against which the so-called Occupy Wall Street protesters stand. (See my prior post on greed.) Scrooge despises the poor and sees them as worthless and expendable members of society. Mr. Scrooge can be seen as a callous symbol of corporate and capitalistic greed, which was apparently precisely what Charles Dickens intended.