Traumatic stress: expanding theconcept (original) (raw)
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Intervention, 2010
Research with survivors of political violence in Latin America have shown that any analysis of the consequences of war or political repression should take into account the social and political realities in which the survivors are immersed. It has also shown that research must go hand in hand with action, intervention and psychosocial support for communities that confront violence. In this article, the authors review some of the basic principles that should guide research and action within the context of war or other political violence. We discuss the roles that the researcher needs to adopt in order to successfully develop work that will be of use to the social and scientific community. In addition, we describe some of the methodological implications of psychosocial research and the importance of reflective processes that could contribute to community wellbeing. The theoretical descriptions are substantiated through examples of action research in Jujuy (Argentina) with former political prisoners and relatives of detainees, or the disappeared, from the time of the last military dictatorship (1976-1983). (C)2010 War Trauma Foundation
Decentering Struggle: Traumatizing Central Americans
Psyke Logos, 2004
This essay demonstrates the ways in which Central American subjects during the last three decades have been centered by changing discourses on violence. From violence entextualized as intrinsic to the eschatological history of the people, to the violence as an autonomous process, that creates entire populations of traumatized. Within this entextualizing trauma is seen as the normal reaction to violence and the ability of social groups and individuals to act has been silenced while agency is transferred to the entities of psycho-social support: The psycho-social interventions combine individualizing and totalizing techniques through which entire populations are placed at the margins of society, living lives in which their emotional state is monitored by humanitarian agencies and interventions designed according to registered levels of well-being and the prevalence of psychological trauma in the general population. By entextualizing violence as an autonomous process, which generates trauma that trough feedback effects may reproduce themselves over several generations, we have arrived at a theoretical model of life at the margins, which is ill equipped to explain the ways in which violence, everyday life and the exercise of power are articulated in post-colonial societies in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2019
In 2013, in Brazil, where she was then living and working, Raluca Soreanu had the opportunity to witness, and become part of, an extraordinary mass uprising. In her deeply informed, thoughtful, and persuasive book, Soreanu brings her education and experience as a psychoanalyst, her considerable knowledge of social theory, and a capacious and creative intellect to her investigation of this uprising. More specifically, Soreanu examines the uprising as an attempt to work through earlier societal traumas, dating back to the violence that took place under military rule. As such, she brings a psychoanalytic theory of trauma to bear on her subject matter-specifically, the trauma theory of Sándor Ferenczi, a pioneer from the early days of psychoanalysis. Ferenczi's penetrating insights remain even today on the cutting edge of understanding trauma. Soreanu both elucidates Ferenczi's theory with unusual depth and clarity, and brings her observations and insights about the uprising back to psychoanalysis, shining fresh light on Ferenczi's theory. As will become clear shortly, Ferenczi's work on trauma and its working through is uniquely suited to a ''social analytics'' (p. 6)-what Soreanu calls the ''second movement'' (p. 6) in the rediscovery and appreciation of Ferenczi's work (the first is its clinical applications). Even in light of others' applications of Ferenczi's trauma theory to group psychology and politics, Soreanu moves into new terrain, looking at as-yet unexplored implications of Ferenczi's ideas. This book will stand as an indispensable resource on Ferenczi's trauma theory, and essential reading for understanding the relationship between individual and group psychology. While this book is theoretically dense, engaging theoretical discussions in fields both psychoanalytic and social along its journey, it is ultimately a deep and often moving consideration of the capacity for shared human connection that can emerge from facing one's traumas and overcoming the alienation, from others and from oneself, that has resulted from them. The book is divided into three sections: Trauma and the Symbol, Trauma and Denial, and Trauma and Recognition. My discussion will not strictly follow her organization. The breadth of ideas that Soreanu brings to her investigation, and the rich texture of her discussions, prevents me from commenting on all her important contributions.
Social trauma, politics and psychoanalysis: A personal narrative
This article posits that social trauma is to be understood from a social psychoanalytic perspective that takes account of the complex interface and mutual impact of social forces and unconscious dynamics. Its argument, that politics and psychology are inevitably interwoven as the foundation of subjectivity, is explored through an autobiographical journey that inexorably took the author from political activism to psychoanalysis. The author's personal, professional and political encounter with the traumatogenic conditions of Latin American state terror, and her involvement in a progressive movement within psychoanalysis that aligns the profession with activist struggles on behalf of social justice, is proposed as a significant model for psychoanalysts in the Global North as well as the Global South. This article suggests that politics can be a portal to the world of psychoanalysis and that psychoanalysis can provide a lens through which to view the centrality of politics in psychological life. It is an essay about the personal and collective meanings of shared trauma and the journey toward resilience and reparation of political destructiveness. I explore these themes in an autobiographical essay that traces my evolution as a Latin American historian and feminist and Marxist activist whose professional and political experiences in the tumultuous conditions of revolution and dictatorship in Latin America inexorably led me to psychoanalysis. The particular psychoanalytic paradigm I had the good fortune to encounter in Latin America was a theory and praxis that was fashioned within extreme social situations of political repression and resistance, of human destructiveness and resilience. Its interest in the intersection between psychic and social reality represented continuity with the
Colombia in Trauma: A Conflict and Post-conflict Scenario
War or Peaceful Transformation: Multidisciplinary and International Perspectives, 2020
The Colombian Peace Process (2012-2016) ended with an agreement that finished one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts of the contemporary world. The traumatic effects on the population give an account of the horrors committed by different actors at the crossfire throughout the years. The peace agreement achieved between the government and the FARC guerrilla movement (2016) embodies a novel and persistent way to overcome different perspectives of the actors and the population itself. In a divided political panorama, the Post-conflict scenario will be a true test for the Colombian people that can serve as an example of the capacity of forgiveness and reconciliation in the modern global system. For the Colombians, it will not be easy to consolidate a peaceful era to facilitate the rise of the country as a new power in the Global South. In this chapter, we will analyze the main elements of the Contemporary Colombian Conflict and its process of negotiations from the short and midterm perspectives, as well as the main actors involved, and the effects of the conflict on the civilian population.
The role of collective memory in emotional recovery of political violence in Colombia
2014
This article enquires about the role of collective memory events of political violence victims of some organizations in three regions of Colombia, eastern Antioquia, southern Cordoba, and Medellin city on the processes of subjective and emotional transformations. It is made from a psychosocial perspective using a hermeneutic phenomenology approach. Life stories were developed with in-depth interviews to 32 people (26 women and 6 men) of Eastern Antioquia, 13 people in southern Córdoba (10 women and 3 men) and 13 mothers of Candelaria; 4 women life stories of the three regions studied; and 19 focus groups with participants of victims processes of the three regions. All these stories were transcribed and analyzed by the categorical analysis method by matrix. Emotional affectations of the victims and following emotional transformations arising by group, collective and public memory events in individuals and collectives involved in the execution of these actions are presented outlining a Psychosocial view that allows to approach from research and intervention to psychological, social and political phenomenon.
Memory and Trauma: Soldier Victims in the Colombian Armed Conflict
SAGE Open, 2020
The Colombian government signed a revised version of the Havana Peace Deal with the country’s main guerrilla group, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in November 2016, giving rise to a set of new opportunities and challenges for the South American nation. Societies that make the transition from conflict to peace need to seek truth, justice, and reparation concerning massive and systematic violations. Thus truth, history, and historical memory (HM) are central to reconciliation and play a key role in fulfilling the national and international obligations of the state. HM in Colombia has emerged mainly from the voices of victims, generating a narrative of events in which the discourses of members of the Armed Forces has, by and large, tended either to be out of place, or is regarded as the perpetrators’ account. Military personnel have usually been perceived to be offenders or perpetrators; finding the “truth” based on narratives of traumatic events is complex. This resear...