Traumatic Conflict Research Articles

Racial melancholia, ambivalence, and shame: a psycho-social examination of white student resistance to anti-racism in a secondary classroom

ABSTRACT This critical ethnographic study uses the concept of racial melancholia to investigate white student resistance to anti-racism in a secondary classroom. I employ a psycho-social (the interplay between psychoanalytic and social processes) approach to examining racialisation through a theoretical and empirical exploration of racial melancholia’s role in engendering a traumatic conflict between desiring anti-racism and betraying whiteness, a conflict that I argue serves as the core of white subjectivity. I analyse three different ways in which racial melancholia caused white students to vacillate between coveting anti-racism and reproducing racism. These students waged a psycho-social battle with whiteness that was mediated by social forces including family, friends, and classmates intersecting and overlapping with psychical processes related to ambivalence and shame. I conclude with how methods for storytelling can open pathways for working through racial melancholia.

Exploring Fearism in Literature: A Critical Study on Select Women Writers of the North East India

The present paper aims to study some of the prose fictions of the select Northeast women writers from a very new perspective in literary theory that is ‘The Philosophy of Fearism’. Fearism , propounded by Desh Subba ,is regarded as the first east-west dialogue, an emerging philosophy that deals basically with the issues of fear and its impact in human life. Mamang Dai from Arunachal Pradesh, Temsula Ao from Nagaland and Arupa Patangia Kalita from Assam have been so vocal female voices from this region and this paper will study some select works by them from a fearist perspective. Their works highlight the concern about ecology, social issues and the traumatic conflicts in human life; nonetheless, we can delineate these philosophical visions of Fearism in the portrayal of characters. Desh Subba, the founder of Fearism asserts that human beings go through fearmorphosis, they are being watched by panopticans and sometimes man himself scapegoat not only the innocent people, even the nature with arms and gun powder. This paper will study ‘Stupid Cupid’ by Mamang Dai, ‘The Curfew Man’ by Temsula Ao and Arupa Patangia kalita’s ‘The Girl with a long Hair’ and will try to interpret with this perspective because the characters dwelling in different situations are the victim of a fear Sisyphus, who are always under the multiple eyes of fear and this fear destabilizes their life being.

Prevalence of trauma among young adults exposed to stressful events of armed conflicts in South Asia: Experiences from Kashmir.

Objective: There is dearth of studies regarding the exposure of traumatic conflicts in Kashmir, India, because of limited research undertaken in this area. Therefore, the main intent of this study was to estimate the prevalence of trauma among young adults exposed to violent and stressful events of armed conflict. Method: This was a cross-sectional study conducted on the prevalence of trauma in all the 10 districts of Kashmir Valley using multistage sampling technique. Data were collected from 693 students by means of the Demographic Information Questionnaire and Kashmir Conflict Exposure Checklist (KCEC). Results: Findings revealed that one third of the respondents were exposed to high traumatic exposure (33.3%), close to quarter of the participants reported extremely high traumatic exposure (23.7%), over one third of the respondents were exposed to moderate traumatic exposure (33.5%), and about one tenth of the sample were exposed to low traumatic exposure (9.5%) in the context of the Kashmir conflict. The prevalence of trauma was 100% in both males and females. The traumatic events with highest rate of prevalence were "feeling stressed" (97.3%), followed by "fear of search operations, crackdowns or curfews" (89.2%); "witnessing a protest or being part of it" (88.3%); "a family member, relative or friend being hit with a bullet, pellet, or any other explosive" (76.5%); and "exposure to violent media portrayals" (74.3%). Thirteen of 17 traumatic events were significantly associated with gender wherein males reported significantly higher prevalence in all of these events than females, except one. Conclusions: The findings of the current study revealed a very disturbing picture regarding the prevalence of traumatic experience of Kashmiri young adults and recommends that educational institutions and nongovernment organizations in Kashmir should pay attention toward guiding the young adults of Kashmir in the right direction for their growth, safety, and welfare, in addition to providing mental health support services, to enhance psychological competence, prevent the development of psychiatric disorders, and utilize the potentials of youth for nation building. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Swift, Secret History, and War

“Swift, Secret History, and War” argues that the relationship between Swift’s writing, reading, and his abiding interest in the English Civil Wars produced a distinctive contribution to the discourses that arose after the reestablishment of monarchy, called “secret histories.” These narratives claim to expose clandestine acts, to pull away veils that hide petty motives, and to expose abuses underlying the exercise of power. In Swift’s work, however, the impulse to dig up embarrassing or disillusioning secrets serves yet another purpose; it allows more painful realities to remain buried and thus provides a means of displacing, postponing, and avoiding direct confrontation with the devastation caused by war. The following discussion identifies and analyzes some of the ways in which traumatic conflict—especially within a nation in which neighbor has fought neighbor—requires indirection, delayed response, and the transference of the burden of representation onto succeeding generations. Literature can play a crucial role in the process of displacement when human history has proven (as Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm master observes) “capable of such Enormities, . . . worse than Brutality itself.” Swift’s distinctive deployment of secret history’s strategies allows an ironic historian a mechanism to look directly at and disclose some of the follies and vices of his culture, but also to remain cognizant, at some level, of what remains buried under “the heap” of a traumatic past.

When Conflict Traumas Fragment: Investigating the Sociopsychological Roots of Turkey’s Intractable Conflict

This article investigates the historical processes contributing towards the specific development of Turkey after the 1920s that in turn established the main contours of Turkey's conflict with the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (PKK). It first argues that the traumatic conflict memories of the Turkish leadership (1918–35) influenced its individual‐level patterns of actions. These memories were used by the leadership to consolidate its imagined national agency in Turkey. The leadership perceived the traditional‐conservative groups as ontological insecurity sources, jeopardizing this agency. It second claims that Turkey's military apparatus is designed to silence these ontological insecurity sources. Finally, it claims these developments informed the ways in which the PKK's narratives of rebellion were constructed. Empirically, it problematizes the impact of the Ottoman Empire's collapse on the Turkish elites. Then, through a discourse analysis of elites' speeches and legal documents, it traces their anxieties to the Ottoman Empire's traumatic end. This article contributes to the trauma literature on ontological security and the emotions literature in International Relations in two ways. It first explores the particular national context in which traumatic memories are shaped and in turn articulated through emotional performances. Secondly, it shows the interplay between sociopsychological processes of security and agency making.

Bill Schwab: at the cutting edge of trauma care

Bill Schwab: at the cutting edge of trauma care

Development of depression: sex and the interaction between environment and a promoter polymorphism of the serotonin transporter gene

Previous research has demonstrated that a polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) and adverse psychosocial circumstances interact to predict depression. The purpose of the present study was to explore the extent to which sex modulates these effects. Eighty-one boys and 119 girls (16-19 years old) were interviewed about psychosocial background variables and genotyped for the 5-HTT promoter polymorphism. There were two main results. First, boys and girls carrying the short 5-HTTLPR allele react to different kinds of environmental factors. Whereas males were affected by living in public housing rather than in own owned homes and by living with separated parents, females were affected by traumatic conflicts within the family. Second, the responses of males and females carrying the short 5-HTTLPR allele to environmental stress factors go in opposite directions. Thus, whereas females tend to develop depressive symptoms, males seem to be protected from depression. The results suggest that both the molecular and the psychosocial mechanisms underlying depression may differ between boys and girls.

De Zuid-Afrikaanse Waarheids- En Verzoeningscommissie als Modelvoor Conflictverzoening

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a model for conflict resolution After the fall of apartheid in 1994, the new South African government got confronted with the necessity to deal with the crimes committed in the past. Apartheid had been a system of institutionalized discrimination by the white minority and this apartheid past could not be ignored when trying to build a unified and peaceful society. The question was how the apartheid atrocities could be dealt with in order for the majority of South Africans to be satisfied. A couple of possibilities were put forward, but the nation eventually opted for the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). This paper will try to provide some background to this phenomenon. Possible alternatives and the coming into existence of the Commission will be highlighted. The concrete proceedings of the TRC will be described and finally the positive and the negative aspects of the Commission will be reflected upon. The final aim is to find out whether the TRC could be seen as a successful and praiseworthy institution and whether it could be regarded as a model for other countries confronted with traumatic conflicts.

Seductive Science and the Emergence of the Secular Jewish Intellectual

ArgumentThis article depicts the emergence of the modern, secular Jewish intellectual in the eighteenth century as a process of intellectual seduction and irresistible attraction of young men to knowledge outside the boundaries of Jewish culture. In the rhetoric of the Haskalah (Enlightenment), the cultural conversion was often described metaphorically as sexual attraction to a forbidden woman. The passion for knowledge inaccessible within the traditional Jewish culture (mainly of the natural sciences, but also of Hebrew, European languages, and philosophy) and intense curiosity were the hallmarks of the early maskilim (Jewish Enlighteners). It is difficult now to assess the sense of audacity, the awareness of sin, of guilt, and of subversion entailed in the desire to enter the realms of extra-Jewish and extra-religious knowledge, as well as the barriers of language and social norms that had to be crossed. The encounter of the Ashkenazi elite in eighteenth-century Europe with extra-Jewish knowledge was a traumatic conflict that grew in intensity as the shelf of Hebrew books and the number of maskilim grew.

Questioning the concept of the state in Indigenous Africa1

The author questions the usefulness of the concept of the ‘state’ as it is applied to indigenous Africa. Using the example of the institution of naam (translatable as ‘authority’ and/or ‘chieftaincy') among the Nanumba or northern Ghana, he argues that African peoples produced original forms of political culture. Their politics were not predominantly based on power, i.e. use or threat of use of physical force like western states. They nevertheless successfully fulfilled political, economic and ideological expectations of their members. Opposing ‘state’ and ‘stateless’ in Africa makes little if any sense; rather the real contrast lies between the Euro‐Asian state and the alternative socio‐political institutions of African and other ‘archaic’ societies of the world. It is suggested that the present traumatic conflicts characteristic of post‐colonial Africa are to be mainly blamed on the imposition of the alien power model on African systems of authority such as naam of the Nanumba. The article calls for red...

Physical Dynamics of Character Structure: Bodily Form and Movement in Analytic Therapy

the subject turns away from the disturbing wish and seeks substitute satisfactions elsewhere. The defenses against the integrative functions of the ego which turns the subject away from solving the original conflict is an essential focus of psychoanalytic work. He states quite clearly that defenses protect a patient from disillusionment. Resolution, on the other hand, achieved by learning, involves acceptance of the fact that the underlying infantile wishes can never be fulfilled. Then, after the acceptance of disillusionment, the patient must renounce these wishes and accept in their place real satisfaction in the presence of the same underlying needs. The conditions essential for renewed learning include the reactivation of the traumatic conflict, at least partially, and an increase in the integrative capacity based on new hopes of possible solutions. Conflict may be mobilized by frustration or by new hope, not all at once but in a series of small steps. Each small step may be considered a focus for analytic work, and it is on this aspect that French concentrates. Too often other authors have attempted to deal with the psychoanalytic process as a totality, without breaking it down into discrete foci which enable the scientific method' to be utilized. French, on the other hand, uses the small steps involved in resolution of a traumatic conflict as foci for scientific analysis. The second section of the book deals with the analysis of psychoanalytic therapy by means of a case report and interpretive comments. This contains the essence of his methodology and the detailed interpretations, which can be clearly understood and checked by other scientists. The third section presents recurring sequences and the therapeutic process; the fourth section, patterns emerging from the past. In the fifth section French returns to the case report and further interpretations. The sixth section deals with the effects of diminishing fear; the seventh section, with impulsive behavior and responsible behavior; the eighth section, with the analyst's interpretations and the patient's insight; the ninth section concerns contributions to the art of psychoanalytic therapy. And, if this were not enough, the terminal section deals with supplementary chapters which augment certain concepts which have been developed throughout the book. There is an adequate index and an excellent bibliography. One of the achievements that French has made in the presentation of his point of view is the close interlocking with actual clinical data, to which he refers with exact references when¬ ever he makes a concluding statement. Because he takes up the same clinical data from many points of view and works the material over and over again, one, unfortunately, gets the feeling of repetition, and sometimes boredom. Nevertheless, French has developed the tech¬ niques of pedagogy which, although difficult for the brilliant student to endure, are suited to the person who needs repetition and constant reference to exemplified material. No student of psychoanalysis who has thoroughly studied French's volumes will fail to learn a great deal about the relationship of theory and interpretation to the practical problems of his patients. It is time-consuming to work through French's writings and sometimes quite disturbing because of one's natural impatience to move on. However, there is no substitute for careful and repetitive analysis of clinical data. French is now an accepted leader in psychoanalytic research, and in the reviewer's opinion has done more for the understanding of the psycho¬ analytic process than any other investigator in the field. This book is highly recommended to all analysts, students of analysis, and psychiatrists.