What we look for in poetry

A chain of events was triggered on the nights of April 23 and 24, 1915, in Constantinople, Turkey, that would end, approximately six years later, with death or forced deportation of more than two and a half million Armenians from their historical homeland in Central and Eastern Turkey. During those two nights over two hundred Armenian writers, historians, translators, poets, journalists, editors, and political leaders were arrested in their homes, taken to the central police station, and never seen again.

The shock of the genocide not only nearly destroyed a nation, together with its articulate literary, political, and cultural leaders, but also paralyzed the creative abilities of its survivors. With their writers, poets, and political leaders lost, their symbolic vocabulary shattered, the Armenians have been unable to distill from the genocide a transcendent wisdom and to present to all cultures the fruits of that distillation via new poetry, art, theater, film, literature, and philosophy, hi the words of V. Oshagan, a modern writer on Armenian and American themes

Seventy years after the event, the Genocide has still not been tackled by any author of note. The Armenians have not recovered from the trauma and with nothing forgotten and nothing forgiven, the Genocide is still continuing. As long as the Turk is identified with the principle of evil in the Armenian imagination, and as long as the Turkish government refuses to admit its guilt and make amends to the victims, the Genocide will continue and will prevent the Armenians from producing any work of art from the theme.

Slowly, over the past two decades, powerful works have emerged that convey to the world, through poetry and myth, the true stupefaction of that horrendous time period. Among these works is the 1980 short story, “Uncle Toros,” by the Armenian writer Mooshegh Galshoyan. With insight and intuition, he portrayed the life of one eighty-year-old victim of the genocide. Old Uncle Toros's recurring nightmare of that event, as vividly told by Galshoyan, allows one to enter the Armenian trauma, to step into the unconscious life of a genocide victim. –A. Chutjian     

100 Years of Trauma: the Armenian Genocide and Intergenerational Cultural Trauma

The events of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, during which more than 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by the Ottoman Turkish Empire, has left a deep, painful scar on this small but prominent culture. Those who lived through the Armenian Genocide survived death marches, rapes, drownings, physical mutilation, and other such heinous crimes. As they have passed, it is being recognized that subsequent generations continue to fight for justice, manifesting their ancestral pain, sadness, and mourning for the loss of their family members. As sociocultural trauma has a multigenerational impact within families and communities and affects the feeling of membership and belonging within that community, understanding how previous traumas shape future generations of that group is important for clinicians. This article reviews the scarce research on intergenerational trauma in the Armenian community within the United States after the Armenian Genocide, using the constructivist self-development theory to provide clinical implications and suggestions.     

A Century of Silence

This paper addresses how crimes of genocide go beyond a need for naked power, economic aggrandizement, or territorial conquest. Such crimes involve psychogenic and psychodynamic underpinnings that can be terrifying to contemplate. Yet their psychological study is essential. The Armenian genocide has been taken as a point of reference. Because the Armenian genocide has resulted in nearly a century-long effort of perpetrator denial, it can provide an important case study of how long-standing trauma and denial reinforce each other and illuminate each other. As a result, this genocide has aptly been called the “secret genocide,” the “unremembered genocide,” and a “crime without a name.” The author holds that genocidal trauma (and trauma in general) is contagious and the contagion is likely to be insidious. All who come in contact with it can come away marked, including victim, victim families and progeny, observers, advocates, researchers, and yes, perpetrators.     

Witnesses to Reality: Working Psychodynamically With Survivors of Terror 1

As generations of young men and women return from combat scarred not only physically but also psychologically by their experiences, as civil wars and genocide proliferate and refugees seek sanctuary in America from persecution in their native countries, even while others are held in violation of their international human rights by the United States government, this paper asks what role psychoanalysts can play in working with those who have survived violence and terror as adults. Offering a relational formulation of adult onset trauma, the author reviews some of the difficulties inherent in being called upon to bear witness to destructive social forces. The paper concludes with the case of a man who has been detained in Guantanamo Bay for the last 6 years.     

Trauma,Healing and The Reconstruction Of Truth

The author analyzes recent developments in trauma theory, made necessary especially after the massive psychic traumas following World War II and the Shoah. The theories of Freud and Ferenczi are analyzed, especially, their different views of reality and their clinical attitude. When working with survivors of any trauma (from incest to genocide) it is necessary to reconstruct the historical details as carefully as possible, with the appropriate timing. Psychoanalysis is therefore viewed as an ethical and political practice similar to testimony, allowing the reconstruction of truth within the community and interrupting the cycle of the death instinct from one generation to the next.     

Addressing Urgent Community Mental Health Needs in Rwanda: Culturally Sensitive Training Interventions

Rwandan leaders in the health and educational sectors have begun to discuss the necessity for establishing culturally appropriate community-based mental health counselling services in Rwanda, especially trauma counselling. The need for a community psychology approach is anchored in the lingering effects of the genocide and the continuing post-traumatic stress symptoms suffered by many in the population. Capacity building in an effort like this would require the design of multi-level counselling curricula that are sensitive to the social structures within Rwandan culture. These curricular endeavours call for the development of a National Counselling Centre to serve as a structural mechanism for organizing community-based counselling initiatives. We consider the community health services needs in Rwanda here, along with associated challenges and strategies for effective mental health services in a country with a recent history of genocide. A community psychology approach to mental health would benefit Rwandan society by making trauma counselling and recovery services available and accessible to citizens throughout the country.     

Twenty years later,the cognitive portrait of openness to reconciliation in Rwanda

With this work, we intended to draw a cognitive portrait of openness to reconciliation. No study had yet examined the potential contribution of high-level cognitive functioning, in addition to psychological health, to explaining attitudes towards reconciliation in societies exposed to major trauma such as post-genocide Rwanda. We measured the contribution of general cognitive capacity, analytical thinking, and subjective judgements. Our results show that higher cognitive capacity is not associated with greater openness to reconciliation. On the other hand, proneness to think analytically about the genocide predicts more favorable attitudes towards reconciliation. The latter effect is associated with more tempered judgements about retrospective facts (e.g., number of genocide perpetrators) and prospective events (e.g., risk of genocide reoccurrence). This work establishes the importance of cognitive functioning in the aftermath of political violence: A better understanding of the influence of information processing on openness to reconciliation may help improve reconciliation policies and contribute to reducing risks of conflict reoccurrence.     

When the Third is Dead: Memory,Mourning, and Witnessing in the Aftermath of the Holocaust1

The origins of psychoanalysis, as well as the concerns of our daily endeavors, center on engagement with the fate of the unbearable – be it wish, affect, or experience. In this paper, I explore psychological states and dynamics faced by survivors of genocide and their children in their struggle to sustain life in the midst of unremitting deadliness. Toward this continuous effort, I re‐examine Freud’s theoretical formulations concerning memory and mourning, elaborate André Green’s concept of the ‘Dead Mother’, and introduce more recent work on the concepts of the ‘third’ and ‘thirdness’. Throughout, my thoughts are informed by our clinical experience with the essential role of witnessing in sustaining life after massive trauma. I bring aspects of all these forms of knowing to reflections about a poem by Primo Levi entitled Unfinished business and to our own never finished business of avoiding denial while living in an age of genocide and under the aura of uncontained destructiveness.     

Memorializing the Sacred: Kristallnacht in German National Memory

This article uses field visits (including photographs) to examine the construction of religious memory in the commemoration of Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) in contemporary German society. Over the last two decades there has been a proliferation of Kristallnacht memorials to the synagogues that were destroyed during the pogroms of November 9, 1938. Based on research at 50 of these memorial sites, I explore the way in which violence against the synagogue (and Jewish sacred objects) has become the symbol of Jewish genocide in German Holocaust remembrance. The findings strongly suggest that the missing synagogue and its destroyed relics have replaced the murdered Jewish citizenry as the predominant subject of memory in public monuments and memorials throughout the country. However, this visual trope as a representation of the sacred is complicated by other attempts at humanizing (and thus implicitly Christianizing) the suffering and sacrifice of the Holocaust.     

Testimonies in the Treatment of Genocidal Trauma

This article describes an approach to the treatment of genocide survivors that addresses both the personal and communal/historical dimensions of their experiences. I begin by outlining the characteristics of massive psychic trauma as background for using video testimonies in the treatment of Holocaust survivors. I then discuss videotaped interviews with perpetrators as an illustrative contrast to survivors' testimonies. The third section explains my position as a psychoanalyst encountering historical trauma and its relationship to my own experiences as a survivor. Following a brief history of videotaping as a medium for recording testimonies, I conclude by demonstrating the ways in which active listening can lead to the revelation of new dimensions of historical as well as personal truth.     

How to Forget the Unforgettable? On Collective Trauma,Cultural Identity,and Mnemotechnologies

Nietzsche’s notion of “active forgetting” is employed to better understand the disruptive and destructive influence of collective trauma on cultural identity. Throughout the article genocide is taken as a cause of extreme trauma and used to illustrate this impact. Active forgetting in this context should not be confused with memories fading away; it is rather a positive and active force, a capacity which an individual, a society, or a culture needs to prosper. This notion provides guidance on how to banish the trauma to the extent that it ceases to paralyze the traumatized group. Technological skills that release negative emotions and ideas generated by the trauma from the collective memory—mnemotechnologies—are required to restore the capacity of forgetting.     

"God must have been sleeping": faith as an obstacle and a resource for Rwandan genocide survivors in the United States

In 1994, 1 million Rwandans were violently killed in only 100 days. Devastating for some Rwandan survivors was the significant role that some Catholic parishes and leaders took in ignoring, facilitating, and even perpetuating the genocide. This article seeks to understand how Rwandan genocide survivors draw on religion as they negotiate their postgenocide identities in the United States and comprehend their current faiths, beliefs, and practices. Based on qualitative interviews with Rwandan survivors now located within the United States, I argue that the experiences of religiosity postgenocide serve as both an obstacle and a resource in postgenocide life, creating significant individual and local ramifications for community engagement, reconciliation, and trauma recovery.     

Scholastic Attainment Following Severe Early Institutional Deprivation: A Study of Children Adopted from Romania

The relationship between severe early institutional deprivation and scholastic attainment at age 11 in 127 children (68 girls and 59 boys) adopted from institutions in Romania was compared to the attainment of 49 children (17 girls and 32 boys) adopted within the UK from a non-institutional background. Overall, children adopted from Romania had significantly lower attainment scores than those adopted within the UK; the children within the Romanian sample who had spent 6 months or more in an institution had significantly lower attainment scores than those who had spent less than 6 months in an institution, but there was no additional risk of low attainment associated with longer institutional care after 6 months. The lower scholastic attainment in the children adopted from Romanian institutions, as compared with domestic adoptees, was mediated by IQ, and to a lesser degree, inattention/overactivity. When these factors were taken into account, only small between-group differences in attainment remained.     

Foster Parents’ Knowledge of Child Trauma: An Exploratory Study

To promote trauma-informed professional supports and services to maltreated youth, it is imperative that researchers explore foster parents’ knowledge of child trauma. However, there is a dearth in the literature related to this topic. This exploratory study utilizes a convenience sample (N = 219) of foster parents in one southeastern state. Variables of interest include actual and perceived knowledge about child trauma. After a terse review of background literature, this paper will explicate key results, discuss these findings, and identify salient practice and policy implications derived from this study. The paper will conclude by delineating apposite areas for future research.     

The Question of the Holocaust's Uniqueness: Was it Something More Than or Different From Genocide?

Dating back to the very beginning of our knowledge of the events that constituted the Holocaust, some historians, social scientists, philosophers, theologians and public intellectuals argue that it was a unique historical, or even trans‐historical, event. The aim of this article is to clarify what the uniqueness question should be about and to ascertain whether there are good reasons for judging that the Holocaust is unique. It examines the core meanings of ‘unique’ that feature in the literature and identifies which of these is most apt for considering the possible uniqueness of the Holocaust. It then works out what it would take for the Holocaust to be unique in the appropriately rigorous sense, which is facilitated by inquiring into the nature of genocide. The key question turns on the relation of the Holocaust to genocide: was the Holocaust more than, or different from, genocide?     

Children in genocide: Extreme traumatization and the ‘affect propeller’1

The author bases this paper on extensive research concerning children in genocide with a starting point in the Holocaust and in the genocide in Rwanda 1994. She demonstrates indicators for psychological phenomena concerning the child survivors' affect regulating that appeared in life histories presented in videotaped in‐depth interviews. The psychological phenomena concern experiences of persecution and ways of coming to terms with recurring memory images and affects. The interviews that have been analysed in detail form a basis for an emerging conceptual model about trauma‐ and generational‐linking processes within each individual‐the ‘affect propeller’. An overall conclusion from this study is that past traumatic experiences are recovered not as memories in the usual sense of the word, but as affects invading the present. Accordingly, affects seem to tell the story of the past traumatic experiences.     

Collective trauma and post-traumatic symptoms in the biblical narrative of ancient Israel

According to the biblical books of Exodus and Numbers, the early Israelites suffered recurrent plagues and other events which comprise significant collective trauma coinciding with their physical and spiritual birth as a people. These ancient narratives reflect a fledgling people's coping with high levels of transitional stress, multiple crises, and significant losses attendant upon slavery and genocide. Inspection of the text also reveals signs of collective post-traumatic reactions among the Israelites. Relevant psychological perspectives on stress, loss, and trauma can therefore usefully illuminate specific biblical events. Trauma may well be implicated in the etiology of certain stringent biblical commandments, including “the ban” and related severe restrictions against Israelite intermarriage. The Bible may also contain insights bearing upon social action aimed at preventing or coping with epidemics and for overcoming psychological trauma, of relevance to a modern positive community psychology.     

The ecumenical commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in Western Europe

This article explores why the Lutheran/Roman Catholic commemoration of the Reformation in 2017 is an ecumenical challenge par excellence. In particular it contrasts the context of the 2017 commemoration with that of previous centenaries and goes more deeply into this by analysing the dialectics of centenaries both in general and with respect to this very special centenary. It also describes major changes in the relationship between Protestants and Catholics, presenting other main aspects of the new context in which that commemoration is taking place in 2017, and addressing different aspects of commemoration. It offers an analysis of how the Catholic/Lutheran Commission on Unity overcame the hindrances to a common commemoration and celebration in its document ‘From Conflict to Communion’, opening the way for a twofold commemoration, both in joy and gratitude, and in lament and confession of guilt. The article also focuses on five ecumenical imperatives which this document offers, not only looking back, but also looking forward, committing Catholics and Protestants to continue their way from conflict to communion. It concludes by describing the highly remarkable service of Common Prayer, which took place in Lund Cathedral, with Pope Francis, for which the above document prepared the way and formed the basis. It becomes clear how theological preparation and the Common Prayer in Lund concurred in making possible a historic ecumenical commemoration and celebration of the Reformation.     

Outpatient Clinic Identification of Trauma Symptoms in Children in Foster Care

As understanding of the impact of trauma on children has grown, there has been increasing interest in the use of screening the medical setting to identify which children at risk may be symptomatic. This study was undertaken to determine whether the use of a trauma assessment tool to screen for trauma symptoms in the setting of a foster care clinic was feasible and more sensitive than non-standardized approaches in the context of outpatient primary care. Using a chart review of trauma symptom identification before and after the implementation of the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSC-C) and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Young Children (TSC-YC), validated trauma assessment tools, we looked at the feasibility of use of this tool and likelihood of trauma symptom identification. 73 % (n = 204) of eligible patients had a trauma screening tool in the medical record following the introduction of the use of the TSC. Detection of trauma symptoms was higher in the screening period than in the baseline period for the entire population (78 vs. 46 %, p < 0.0001), and trauma symptoms were identified with more specificity following the introduction of, and likely due to, formal trauma screening. However, there were limitations as to feasibility in the outpatient medical clinic. In conclusion, the use of the TSC-C and TSC-YC in the setting of an outpatient foster care evaluation clinic increased rates and precision of identification of trauma symptoms, but had limitations to its feasibility of use in the outpatient clinic setting.     

Genocide and ethnic cleansing. Psychoanalytic and social-psychological viewpoints

The author tries to set ethnic cleansing and genocide in relation to both psychoanalytic understanding of the human mind and of groups, and to certain aspects of modern society and modernism. Following the Polish sociologist Zygmund Bauman, he claims that genocidal situations can be a product of certain properties of modern society which under certain situations (i.e., under totalitarian conditions) can come into being. Malignant group processes can then cause more-or-less organized cruel acts. The worst example is the Holocaust during the second world war, but the problem has seen new, sad repetition in recent years (i.e., Bosnia Herzegovina). Psychoanalysis can shed light on and partly explain how individuals and groups under these circumstances can change and then execute cruel acts, often on a mass-scale. The importance of prevention is stressed. An aspect of this is the afterwork (including the work of grief) after the atrocities, so as to prevent the next generations continuing the cruelties.