The Politics of Trauma and Victimhood

2008

Although psychologists have frequently observed "that civilians in the Middle East have been subjected to frequent episodes of violence, intra/inter-group conflicts and natural disasters" (Neria et al.), hinting at high rates of trauma and PTSD among the populations of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), there has been until recently a lack of locally embedded research on trauma and the politics of suffering in this region. While generalizations about the extent of traumatization are regularly expressed by scientists as well as the media, e.g. in regard to Syrian refugees since 2012, Iraqi children after the US-led invasion in 2003, the current violent war in Yemen, the Lebanese civil war, and the Palestinian Nakba-all of them man-made disasters-claiming individual, collective, or national trauma as a political identity that demands justice, recognition of suffering, and rights of retribution has not yet acquired legal authority. Still, the politics of suffering from violence and war-how we articulate our suffering, to whom, and why-seems to be a matter of intense discussion and debate in the MENA, often taking a comparative approach: "who suffers the most, the Syrians, the Yemenis, or Palestinians living under occupation?" Embedded within these comparisons is a competition over the political recognition of victimhood ed i to r i a l 05

2007

International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 2011

Refugee war trauma" is a poor adjunct to post-traumatic stress, lacking context for a civilian survivor of war. The "therapeutic mission", or consolidating a therapeutic agenda with political reconstitution, has its tensions: Such founders embody politics of "emotionology" (Humphrey, 2005, p. 205) bound largely to pharmaceuticals, from a land of "freedom" (where emphasis is on market) and "democracy" (where emphasis is on autonomy of choice, not accountability). Additionally, how people "cope" or "solve problems" is not universal: Therapy speaks of self-empowerment, selfactualisation, and self-control; reconciliation speaks of collective citizenship, national participation, and group reform. Instituting participation in rituals that 'help" according to predefined norms of an American prescription to suffering speaks more to the globalisation of the American psyche (Watters, 2010; Venne, 1997) than of humanitarian relief. This paper looks at the absence of cultural and socio-political specificities within the dominant discourse on "war trauma", that are however of ultimate relevance for people affected by war. Using a case example from my own practice with a Rwandan woman living now in Canada, I question the "helpfulness" of post-traumatic stress treatment with this instance of refugee war trauma, and the impact of power systems in mental health care. How can the therapeutic encounter, given its genesis in Eurocentric, patriarchal, enlightenment thought, pause to better consider its potential for injury, especially within contexts of post-colonial genocide? How to avoid a new "mission to civilise"? What tensions to note as the advent of "trauma counselling" seeks more global application and transnational legitimacy?

2013

Although Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is only one of the identifiable responses to trauma, it has become the main focus of trauma research, writing, and clinical interventions. The unquestioned use worldwide of PTSD, however, presents the risk of oversimplifying human responses to traumatic events. This article goes beyond critiques of the current trauma paradigm and intends to offer new theoretical tenets whereby multiple local contexts could be better incorporated into trauma discourse and practice. If a renewed trauma paradigm aims to have a role in the global health arena, it should be informed locally and globally.

Transcultural Psychiatry, 2014

Recent years have seen the rise of historical trauma as a construct to describe the impact of colonization, cultural suppression, and historical oppression of Indigenous peoples in North America (e.g., Native Americans in the United States, Aboriginal peoples in Canada). The discourses of psychiatry and psychology contribute to the conflation of disparate forms of violence by emphasizing presumptively universal aspects of trauma response. Many proponents of this construct have made explicit analogies to the Holocaust as a way to understand the transgenerational effects of genocide. However, the social, cultural, and psychological contexts of the Holocaust and of post-colonial Indigenous "survivance" differ in many striking ways. Indeed, the comparison suggests that the persistent suffering of Indigenous peoples in the Americas reflects not so much past trauma as ongoing structural violence. The comparative study of genocide and other forms of massive, organized violence can do much to illuminate both common mechanisms and distinctive features, and trace the looping effects from political processes to individual experience and back again. The ethics and pragmatics of individual and collective healing, restitution, resilience, and recovery can be understood in terms of the self-vindicating loops between politics, structural violence, public discourse, and embodied experience.

2017

Edited volumes serve an important purpose: when executed correctly, they help consolidate a body of scholarship, encourage dialogue between the volume's contributors and set an agenda for future research. The historical study of trauma has been well-catered for in this respect by Traumatic Pasts, edited by Mark S. Micale and Paul Lerner, and published in 2001.(1) Micale and Lerner's work helped to establish the view that the experiences and labels applied to traumatic experiences are inextricably historical. This central argument of Traumatic Pasts remains popular, with the volume still commended in recent studies. Edited collections that follow Micale and Lerner's volume will, therefore, and however unfairly, be compared to its high benchmark. Yet the issues that existed at the time of the publication of Traumatic Pasts have only grown or intensified since. The concept of trauma has significantly broadened. Psychiatric theories of it have diffused more widely, bound up in what Didier Fasin and Richard Rechtman identify as a rise of 'victim culture'.(2) Hence the spread of terms like 'trigger-warning', the emergence of concepts like 'transgenerational trauma' and the political movements that cohere around the term 'survivor' ('sexual assault survivor', 'domestic violence survivor', etc.). Hence also why theories of trauma are now heavily implicated in societal response to domestic terrorism, torture, natural disaster and migration. In a mere 16 years, the trauma industry has grown, and at considerable speed. Jason Crouthamel and Peter Leese, joint editors of two new collections on the history of trauma, are attentive to these developments and the challenges they pose for historians. Indeed, their two volumes, which emerged from a conference in Copenhagen in 2013, might be read as a response to developments

The Lancet, 2007

Regrettably, exposure to trauma is common worldwide, and can have serious adverse psychological results. The introduction of the notion of post-traumatic stress disorder has led to increasing medicalisation of the problem. This awareness has helped popular acceptance of the reality of post-traumatic psychiatric sequelae, which has boosted research into the pathogenesis of the disorder, leading to improved pharmacological and psychological management. The subjective experience of trauma and subsequent expression of symptoms vary considerably over space and time, and we emphasise that not all psychological distress or psychiatric disorders after trauma should be termed post-traumatic stress disorder. There are limits to the medicalisation of distress and there is value in focusing on adaptive coping during and after traumas. Striking a balance between a focus on heroism and resilience versus victimhood and pathological change is a crucial and constant issue after trauma for both clinicians and society. In this Review we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of medicalising trauma response, using examples from South Africa, the Armed Services, and post-disaster, to draw attention to our argument. Lancet 2007; 369: 139-44

Minerva chirurgica, 2013

Violent trauma does not only affect conflict and post conflict regions, but increasingly industrialized nations afflicted by violence from terror attacks. We conducted a comparative health systems analysis, assuming that that health systems with various backgrounds might learn from each other's health systems challenges caused by violent trauma. During the tragedy of Beslan in the Russian North Caucasus in September of 2004, more than 1000 children with their families were taken hostage in a school. Over three days, 334 people were killed and many more injured. While immediate trauma care was offered to all victims, many suffered from more complex injuries or from blast injuries to the ear caused by indoor bomb explosions, which were left untreated due to the lack of regional capacity for the required specialized microsurgery. Most if not all victims suffered from mental trauma as a consequence of violence, which also impacted surgical care-seeking. In April of 2013, two improvi...

2012

While posttraumatic stress disorder has catalogued symptoms of trauma, the resulting de-contextualization has served to create complicity with power systems that contribute to the production of trauma. Women are overrepresented as targets of violence and as recipients of this diagnosis.

Wounds and Words, 2013

"Trauma has become a paradigm because it has been turned into a repertoire of compelling stories about the enigmas of identity, memory and selfhood that have saturated Western cultural life." (ROGER LUCKHURST, THE TRAUMA QUESTION) Any attempt to define and theorize "trauma" involves a struggle to make sense of the confusing array of current conceptualizations of trauma, ranging from PTSD to cultural trauma. Any attempt to write a history of trauma faces further challenges in trying to find a way through the jungle-like complexity of the historiography of psychiatry. Roy Porter and Mark Micale emphasize the highly controversial nature of the history of psychiatry and conclude that "it has thus far proved impossible to produce anything like an enduring, comprehensive, authoritative history" (6). 1 Within the contested field of psychiatry, trauma is, in turn, a particularly controversial subject. The history of trauma is a history of repeated gaps and ruptures, with cyclical periods of attention and neglect, of fascination and rejection (van der Kolk,