Collective Trauma

We cannot explore the individual’s trauma while ignoring the bigger context.

The individual exists in a social framework; ‘all of those components (including the therapist) are an integral part of the wider social system including past history, present meaning and the culture of all the participants (Littlewood and Ababio, 2019).

Working with trauma social dimension is as important as psychological one. We should pay attention to social, political and historical contexts as they shape the individual’s experiences.

Collective trauma, as a part of that bigger context, is less “visible” to therapists trained to work with individuals. It’s ‘a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of community’ (Myers and Wee, 2005).

Disasters like wars, pandemics, natural catastrophes affect directly a large population and cause mass traumas. Psychological responses to these disasters and shared traumatic experiences can be referred to collective traumas. Koh (2021) states that in a collective trauma there is a degree of 'sameness in the subjectivity of that experience'.

Furthermore, we not only share our collective traumas. Very often, our past collective traumas are still present. “Our ancestors’ traumas are transmitted further like emotional inheritance leaving an imprint in both our mind and the mind of future generations. […] It is those traumas that are unspeakable and too painful for the mind to digest that become our own inheritance and impact our offspring, and their offspring, in ways they cannot understand or control” (Atlas, 2022).

Noteworthy, ‘the failure to deal with trauma’ is not ‘the failure of speaking’ but rather ‘the failure of listening’ (Frosh, 2021). Often, historically, there are testimonies but nobody picks them up due to, for example, repressions, denial or 'collective amnesia'.

Soreanu (2018) argues that there might still be some sense of ‘irreparability’ in the collective trauma, which cannot be ‘repaired’ under any circumstances. What probably might be ‘repaired’ is memory about it. So, for many of us, our 'unconscious 'mission' is not to remain silent in regards to our collective traumas. This might help make some meanings of the collective traumatic experiences, let those silent voices from the past speak, while putting the ghost of the past to rest.

It is important to remember that “next generations carry not only the burden of the past but also a hope, as their existence is a proof that their families have survived and future is possible” (Atlas, 2022).

References:

Ababio, B. and Littlewood, R. (2019) Intercultural Therapy: Challenges, Insights and Development. London: Routledge.

Atlas, G. (2022) Emotional Enharitance: A Therapist, Her Patience and the Legacy of Trauma. New York: Hachette Book Group.

Dee, D. and Myers, D. (2005) Disaster. Mental Health Services. Hove: Brunner-Routledge.

Frosh, S. (2021) Trauma. [Seminar to MA Psychoanalytic Studies], Birkbeck University of London, 3 March 2021.

Koh, E. (2021) The Healing of Historical Collective Trauma. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, 15 (1): 115-133.

Soreanu, R. (2018) Working-through Collective Wounds. Trauma, Denial, Recognition in the Brazilian Uprising. London: Palgrave Macmillan.