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Picard was tortured by Cardassians (pretty efficiently, as we saw in the end), assimilated (a trauma which affected him throughout his life), relived a whole (fake) life where he had a wife and children whom he "lost" when he returned to reality (he showed in that episode and later ones that he cared), he "died" and saw an alternate version of himself who didn't take risks... and much more.

I can only ask myself, how come he is still the captain after all that trauma? How come he didn't get PTSD or a similar condition? Starfleet did send him away after the Borg incurred into Sector 001 for the second time just to be safe.

How come this man keeps his sanity after all those traumatic events?

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    I'm not sure there's going to be a good answer to this. Perhaps he's just unusually resilient. There are real-world survivors of torture who went on to lead successful lives.
    – Molag Bal
    Commented Apr 7, 2017 at 19:59
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    he does carry a full time counselor around with him, as well as Troi (da da bum #Guinan)
    – NKCampbell
    Commented Apr 7, 2017 at 20:04
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    Medicinal marijuana.
    – void_ptr
    Commented Apr 7, 2017 at 20:05
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    I'm not sure if this is answer worthy, but in Picard's time medical technology is ludicrously advanced. If McCoy could cure a plague, on his own, without access to a computer, in a matter of days, a century earlier, I imagine psychological trauma is not exceptionally difficult to mitigate in the 24th century. Remember, the brain is an organ too.
    – ApproachingDarknessFish
    Commented Apr 7, 2017 at 21:25
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    Civan, a few years ago, I watched a freshman cadet pass four upper classmen on the last hill of the forty kilometre run on Danula Two. Damnedest thing I ever saw. The only freshman to ever win the Academy marathon. I made it my business to get to know that young fellow. I got to know him very, very well, and I'll tell you something: I never met anyone with more drive, determination, or more courage than Jean-Luc Picard. There is no way in hell that he would let a few traumatic experiences damage his sanity. I want that clear.
    – Paul D. Waite
    Commented Apr 7, 2017 at 22:08

2 Answers 2

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Short answer, the same reason only some military personnel develop PTSD or similar conditions

Psychiatry is not an exact science a man may be able to bounce back from extreme physical torture with no lasting mental effects but the same man would spend the rest of his life in a padded room if you locked him in a closet full of cockroaches for an hour

There is no way to tell what will actually traumatize someone

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    That's a great answer...but I don't buy it. The real reason is that TNG was still being written under "reset button" rules for the most part.
    – Michael Scott Shappe
    Commented Apr 7, 2017 at 21:55
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    In all honesty the things a lot of fictional people are subjected to over the course of their show or movie probably would cause significant psychological damage to most real people but we want to see them do things not sit in a padded room rocking back and forth
    – revenant
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 3:47
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Or possibly most episodes happen in alternate universes to all the other episodes and it is very rare for any episode except for important arc episodes to be sequels to other episodes. So we can hope that Picard did not experience "The Best of Both Worlds", "Chain of Command", "The Inner Light", and "Tapestry" in the same universe. It is possible that in most alternate universes Picard and the Federaton survived "The Best of Both Worlds", but Picard took a lot longer to recover than in "Family" and in many of them he may never haver recovered.

I remember a Rocky and His Friends episode where a seed of a man-eating plant entered the submarine that took Boris, Natasha, and Fearless Leader back to Pottsylvania. When the sub arrived, the man-eating plant emerged, but Boris and Natasha were seen in many later episdoes. So if Rocky and His Friends’ stories happen in many different alternate universes it can explain how Boris and Natasha were alive in many stories after supposedly being eaten.

Thus the Star Trek characters could be executed, or fired, or imprisoned, or go insane, etc. after many episodes, but we don't see those effects because all the other episodes are in alternate universes.

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  • Interesting theory. Any clues given to that effect?
    – Z. Cochrane
    Commented Apr 8, 2017 at 22:28
  • Zabeus - That theory is based on observations of long TV series in general and Star Trek in particular. Several episodes like "Where no One has Gone Before", "Q Who?" , "The Price", and in other series indicate that maximum warp speed for long trips should not be faster than the official warp factor formula. Adding up the minimum total distance traveled may show, for example, that they traveled much farther than would be possible if all the episodes happened in the same alternate universe.
    – M. A. Golding
    Commented Apr 10, 2017 at 15:52

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