Has Psychology created an oversensitivity to torment or discovered it?

Professor Marc Shapiro has again raised the issue which we have talked about in the past (March 2012)

4. In a recent post on his blog, R. Daniel Eidensohn refers to my comment in this post where I suggested that the lenient attitude towards pedophilia in much of right wing Orthodoxy is due to the fact that the real trauma of sexual abuse is not something that one can learn about in traditional Jewish sources but comes to us from psychology, and as such is suspect in those circles that see psychology as a “non-Jewish” discipline. Let me offer another example that illustrates how today we take sexual abuse much more seriously than in previous years. Here is a responsum no. 378 from R. Joseph Hayyim’s Torah li-Shemah. [...]

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However as I get further in my investigation of emotional abuse and rabbinic sources - it is becoming increasingly obvious that a much  more important issue is whether psychology has now revealed that which always existed but no one knew about it - or alternatively that psychology (and musar) have created a sensitivity and psychological vulnerability that didn't exist before. 

This is not only in the issue of child abuse - but chinuch where we see that beatings and shame have become to be viewed in our time as being wrong in the frum world.  We now focus on avoiding emotional abuse rather than toughness or discipline which is clear from Makkos 8 or Rav Dessler is the goal of chinuch.

This issue is relevant also for divorce. It seems clear that the Torah was not "sensitive" to the feelings of women. It would seem that the rabbinic laws such as Kesubos or Rabbeinu Gershon's decree not to force a divorce - were not because of concern for feelings but because concern for social stability that resulted by making divorce more difficult. Even the halacha of not to be hasty in divorcing your first wife because even the Altar sheds tears (Gittin 90b) - seems to be directed to social stability and not because of psychological trauma the wife suffers from divorce. There is no problem of being hasty for the second marriage. The halacha views the issue of hasty divorce of the first wife as one of betrayal of the commitment of the husband to a woman he married when they were teenagers - not because the wife is being discarded for a better cook or younger woman or that she will be devastated.

Update March 13
I am asking a very fundamental question. In order to explain the absence of the mention of trauma from abuse in the literature, I am suggesting that it is a result of the change of our psychological sensitivity which is the result in change in education and attitudes toward suffering.

I view the relatively recent development of the concept of empathy as support for my thesis.

An alternative is Dr. Shapiro's view that the absence simply indicates that society was unaware of the terrible consequences of abuse and trauma's of all sorts.

You are claiming that support for my hypothesis is merely an artifact of my defintions of terms. Perhaps - but I think it is much more fruitful to explore the question then to define it away.

There a story about a resident doctor talking to his supervisor. The superivsor asked him for a diagnosis of a difficult case. The resident proudly rattles off an obscure explanation which seemed to fit the case very accurately. The superverisor responded, "The only problem with your diagnosis is that there is nothing we can do and the condition is terminal. However there is an alternative diagnosis while less likely than the one you gave - however there is a cure for it. Why don't we take the chance of the less likely diagnosis?"

My position is that my explanation is more productive and useful than giving an explanation which involves either ignorance or deliberately sacrificing the victim for the sake of family or community.

If it is true that trauma is a function of education and attitudes than that provides a powerful tool for preventing trauma - as opposed to picking up the pieces after the crash. 

 

In short - is the absence of rabbinic writings referring to psychological pain - the result of ignorance or because the pain did not exist and it is a recent development?