Collective trauma

About: Collective trauma is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 410 publications have been published within this topic receiving 5614 citations.

Historical Trauma Among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: Concepts, Research, and Clinical Considerations

Abstract: Indigenous Peoples of the Americas have experienced devastating collective, intergenerational massive group trauma and compounding discrimination, racism, and oppression. There is increasing evidence of emotional responses to collective trauma and losses among Indigenous Peoples, which may help to inform ways of alleviating psychological suffering and unresolved grief. Tribal cultural and regional differences exist which may impact how the wounding across generations and within an individual's lifespan are experienced and addressed. This article will review the conceptual framework of historical trauma, current efforts to measure the impact of historical trauma upon emotional distress, and research as well as clinical innovations aimed at addressing historical trauma among American Indians/Alaska Natives and other Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. We will discuss assessment of historical trauma and implications for research and clinical as well as community interventions, and conclude with recommendations.

Searching for and finding meaning in collective trauma: results from a national longitudinal study of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Abstract: The ability to make sense of events in one's life has held a central role in theories of adaptation to adversity. However, there are few rigorous studies on the role of meaning in adjustment, and those that have been conducted have focused predominantly on direct personal trauma. The authors examined the predictors and long-term consequences of Americans' searching for and finding meaning in a widespread cultural upheaval--the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001--among a national probability sample of U.S. adults (N=931). Searching for meaning at 2 months post-9/11 was predicted by demographics and high acute stress response. In contrast, finding meaning was predicted primarily by demographics and specific early coping strategies. Whereas searching for meaning predicted greater posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms across the following 2 years, finding meaning predicted lower PTS symptoms, even after controlling for pre-9/11 mental health, exposure to 9/11, and acute stress response. Mediation analyses suggest that finding meaning supported adjustment by reducing fears of future terrorism. Results highlight the role of meaning in adjustment following collective traumas that shatter people's fundamental assumptions about security and invulnerability.

Self-Efficacy and Health-Related Outcomes of Collective Trauma A Systematic Review

Abstract: The objective of our study was to systematically review research evidence for relationships between self-efficacy beliefs and psychological as well as somatic outcomes of collective traumatic events. Twenty-seven studies enrolling adult and adolescent survivors of acute, escalating, and chronic collective trauma with a total of N = 8011 participants were reviewed. Cross-sectional studies suggest medium to large effects of self-efficacy on general distress, severity and frequency of PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) symptoms (weighted r values range from –.36 to –.77), whereas longitudinal studies indicate large effects on general distress and PTSD symptom severity (weighted r values range: –.55 to –.62). Self-efficacy was also related to better somatic health (self-reported symptoms, i.e., less pain, fatigue, or disability). Studies addressing the relationship between self-efficacy and substance abuse after collective trauma revealed a more complex picture. Some types of pretreatment self-efficacy (e.g...

Remaking a World - Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery

Abstract: Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Margaret Lock, Mamphela Ramphele, Pamela Reynolds (eds.), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.Reviewer: Sima AprahamianConcordia UniversityRemaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery edited by Veena Das et al. is the third (and last) volume on social suffering, violence and recovery compiled by the members of the Committee on Culture, Health, and Human Development of the Social Science Research Council (New York). Whereas the first two volumes Social Suffering and Violence and Subjectivity examined the effects of problems related to force, political, economic, institutional power on individuals and communities, this last volume explores how people build their lives after collective trauma or after being marginalized through structured violence.As described in the insightful introduction by Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman, Remaking a World brings together six ethnographic papers interwoven through "the thread of narration." The six essays in Remaking a World focus on the remaking of everday life after social trauma. The overlapping fibers of the ethnographic cases as Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman point out, deal with the following: "(a) relation between collective and individual memory; (b) creation of alternative public spheres for articulating and recounting experience silenced by officially sanctioned narratives; (c) retrieval of voice in the face of recalcitrance of tragedy; and (d) meaning of healing and the return to everyday" (p. 3).The ethnographic essays in Remaking a World often poetically address the issues of social trauma and the remaking of everyday life through a uniquely anthropological perspective that explores how violence "works on lives and interconnections to break communities" (p. 1). This is a welcome contribution in a field dominated by psychologists and psychiatrists whose focus is on documenting, diagnosing posttraumatic stress disorder. The anthropological approach brings into attention issues of cultural representations, collective experience, critiques of the construction of knowledge based on the appropriation of social suffering. It also highlights the consequences of social suffering on everyday life; the effects of collective violence and social trauma on the individual, and "coping" with social suffering.After exploring everyday life in the context of violence, the focus in Remaking a World is thus on mappings of healing and re-starting anew a life disrupted and affected by violence through detailed ethnographic case studies. The case studies compiled in this volume are marked with great diversity. …

The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century

Abstract: Felman, Shoshana. The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. 253pp. $19.95 paperback. The twentieth century, writes Shoshana Felman at the opening of her precisely written and subtly argued book, The juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century, "was in effect a century of traumas and (concurrently) a century of theories of trauma" (1). It was also a century of trials-indeed, it was a century of "trials of the century." Every decade seemed to bring a new "trial of the century," from the trial of labor leader "Big Bill" Haywood of 1907 to the Clinton impeachment trial of 1999. In The juridical Unconscious, Felman brings together these two marked characteristics of the twentieth century, examining the complex and often-invisible links between traumas and trials. Felman casts a broad and bold argument that could easily have become overwhelming for her and her readers, but she wisely contains and sharpens her argument by choosing to concentrate on two specific "trials of the century: " the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann and the 1995 trial of O.J. Simpson. She argues persuasively that these two trials, though occurring in very different historical, cultural and legal contexts, share a structural similarity that makes them paradigmatic cases for thinking through the connections between trials and traumas in the twentieth century. Both trials, Felman argues, began as simple processes of litigation and controversies over legal issues, but quickly evolved into "veritable theaters of justice" (4). The chief characteristic that these two trials share is that both revolve around and move between the two separate poles of private trauma and collective trauma (6). The Eichmann trial began as a case that dealt with a collective crime and collective trauma and evolved into a case that opened up a new way of dealing legally with private traumas. The Simpson trial reversed this process, beginning as a case about a private trauma and evolving into a case about collective traumas. By cleverly placing these two much-discussed trials face-to-face with each other, Felman is able to offer a new perspective on each trial and on the relationship between trials and traumas more generally. Felman's theoretical framework continues this process of innovative and illuminating pairing of seemingly different thinkers, placing together Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt. Of the three, Benjamin is most crucial for Felman's argument. It is his theory of history as trauma and his investigation of the process of converting trauma into insight that lie at the center of The Juridical Unconscious. Like Benjamin, Felman is concerned with the ways in which expression can be given to what Benjamin called "the expressionless" (das Ausdruckslose). …