Vicarious Resilience: An Exploration of Teachers and Children’s Resilience in Highly Challenging Social Contexts

This study explores the formulation of vicarious resilience as a useful concept in the middle school age school educational arena. It addresses the question of how teachers who work with learners who experienced dislocation and adversity are affected by the children’s stories of resilience. It focuses on the teachers’ interpretations of their learners’ stories, and how they make sense of the impact these stories have had on their lives. Twenty-one teachers who work in accelerated learning programs in Cali, Colombia, were interviewed about their perceptions of their learners’ overcoming of adversity. Data were analyzed through the Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) methodology to describe the themes that speak about the effects of witnessing how learners coped constructively with adversity. These themes are discussed to advance the concept of vicarious resilience and how it can contribute to sustaining and empowering teachers dealing with challenging children and trauma.     

Transgenerational processes and the trauma of sexual abuse

The process of the unconscious transmission of trauma between generations has been written about within the psychoanalytic field since Freud. the concept was further developed by psychoanalysts in their work with second generation survivors of the Holocaust. the particular characteristic is that it is a transmission that takes place silently and in secret, but actively. It is especially found in families where there is an inhibition against thinking. It is suggested in this paper that the concept could be usefully considered in families where a parent is a survivor of child sexual abuse but has kept the trauma a secret. Clinical examples illustrate how children in such families may carry the unconscious dynamics which can emerge into consciousness through symptomatology in the child.     

Disaster recovery experiences of a South African rural farming community

This study explored the bush fire disaster experiences and coping of South African farmers. Participants consisted of seven male farmers (6?=?White Afrikaans-speaking; 1?=?Black Tswana-speaking). Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, nine months after the disaster, and analysed thematically. The findings showed that the farmers’ recovery was characterised by three distinct, transitioning phases. The first period involved resource-maintenance coping and emotion-focused coping. The second time period was characterised by meaning making related strategies. Finally, the third time period was charactirised by anxiety over reoccurrence and resource-maintenance coping. The results also suggest that successful coping is reliant on the individual's ability to adapt coping strategies continually, in a context-appropriate manner.     

Fast Feet Forward: A sports group for looked-after children and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children as an early intervention to process trauma and reduce distress

Looked-after children (LAC) and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) are likely to have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in their developmental years, leading to poorer outcomes in their health and psychosocial development. A novel, exercise-based early intervention utilising bilateral movements for UASC and adoptive children (An early intervention framework for the emotional health and wellbeing of unaccompanied minors, 2020) called Fast Feet Forward (FFF) has shown promise in providing relief from trauma symptoms. This study seeks to replicate the effectiveness of FFF and extend it to a new population of traumatised children. Two groups of FFF occurred with 18 children participating. Results revealed a statistically significant decrease in distress and an increase in positive cognitions for UASC, showing effective processing of trauma-related hotspots. The LAC cohort also demonstrated a statistically significant decrease in distress and disturbance. Support is demonstrated for the efficacy of FFF as a cost-effective and resiliency-building early intervention treatment utilising bilateral movements for traumatised populations, especially UASC.     

Reflections on coma: Man deprived of his consciousness

In this paper the authors reflect on the phenomena produced by the surprising communication between the unconscious of a therapist and that of a comatose patient. In a particularly disturbing context, when the patient’s sternum is open and exposed, the therapist communicates empathically with the comatose person, identifying the patient’s inexpressible experience and generating signs of a response from him in the form of the blinking of his eyelids. The absence of any reaction to pain, a pathognomonic sign of the comatose condition, could be related to the splitting‐off of the trauma, as if the situation were frozen, through a denial of the sensory and neurological perception of pain – a kind of self‐anaesthesia as a defence against the catastrophic anxieties raised by the threat of the return of the primary trauma. Starting from this encounter a relationship is formed whose guiding thread emerges in the shared illusion of a regression that makes it possible. It involves a process of returning to the past and a re‐actualization of the past that includes the question of its change through representation.     

Monuments of memory: defensive mechanisms of the collective psyche and their manifestation in the memorialization process

The paper searches for insight in the area of collective memory as a part of collective consciousness, a phenomenon understood as a stabilizing factor for a society's self-image and identity. Collective memories are seen as originating from shared communications transmitting and creating the meaning of the past in the form of narrative, symbols and signs. As such, they contain the individual, embodied and lived side of our relations to the past. As well as the identity-building and meaning-making functions of collective memories, their defensive function is discussed with a focus on commemorative practices taking place in a transitional space between psychic and social life. Fears of a lack of collective identity and coherence have contributed to the way Polish commemorative practices have been shaped. This is considered in relation to the Smolensk catastrophe in 2010, viewed in the context of the Jungian concept of the collective psyche and the psychoanalytical understanding of defensive group mechanisms against trauma, especially those relating to loss and mourning. It leads to a consideration of how historical experiences and the experience of history can be accessed, as well as their meaning for individual and group development.     

Transgenerational transmission of indigestible facts: from trauma,deadly ghosts and mental voids to meaning‐making interpretations

Abstract: In this paper¹ I will discuss clinical material and make some hypotheses on how to work with patients for whom trans‐generational transmission of trauma is an issue. Basing my hypothesis on two clinical cases, I will propose a way of dealing with undigested facts, the fabric of trauma, which generate deadly ghosts and mental voids that are transmitted from one generation to the next. I will propose a way of formulating interpretations for the unthinkable to become thinkable and find a representation in the mind of patients who suffer from transgenerationally transmitted trauma. Some thoughts will be given to the maternal and the paternal transmitters of trauma in relation to child development issues.     

Mothers of Children with Complex Trauma: Occupations Viewed through Photovoice

Abstract

Research in complex trauma has focused on the experiences of children, with less written about their non-offending parents’ occupations. This study utilized photovoice to explore occupations of six mothers of children with complex trauma. Mothers related great difficulty considering their own experiences, rather than their children’s, as they took photos, attended group meetings, and wrote narratives about their photos. Data were analyzed with a modified framework analysis. Themes reflected unrelenting responsibilities for others, identity and aspiration, transformation and empowerment, and belonging within supportive communities. Mothers described their growth and the value of their study participation and they recommended future actions.