National trauma

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National trauma is a concept in psychology and social psychology. A national trauma is one in which the effects of a trauma apply generally to the members of a collective group such as a country or other well-defined group of people. Trauma is an injury that has the potential to severely negatively affect an individual, whether physically or psychologically. Psychological trauma is a shattering of the fundamental assumptions that a person has about themselves and the world. [1] An adverse experience that is unexpected, painful, extraordinary, and shocking results in interruptions in ongoing processes or relationships and may also create maladaptive responses. [2] Such experiences can affect not only an individual but can also be collectively experienced by an entire group of people. [2] Tragic experiences can collectively wound or threaten the national identity, [3] that sense of belonging shared by a nation as a whole represented by tradition culture, language, and politics. [4]

Contents

In individual psychological trauma, fundamental assumptions about how the individual relates to the world, such as that the world is benevolent and meaningful and that the individual has worth in the world, are overturned by overwhelming life experiences. [1] Similarly, national trauma overturns fundamental assumptions of social identity – something terrible has happened and social life has lost its predictability. [2] The causes of such shatterings of assumptions are diverse and defy neat categorization. For example, wars are not always national traumas; while the Vietnam War is experienced by Americans as a national trauma [5] Winston Churchill famously titled the closing volume of his history of the Second World War Triumph and Tragedy. [6] Similar types of natural disasters can also provoke different responses. The 2016 Fort McMurray Wildfire in Alberta was a collective trauma for not only that local community but also the large Canadian Province of Alberta despite causing no direct deaths [7] yet the much larger Peshtigo Fire responsible for thousands of deaths is largely forgotten. [8]

Responses to national trauma also vary. A nation that experiences clear defeat in war which had mobilized the nation to a high degree will almost inevitably also experience national trauma but the way in which that defeat is felt can change the response. [9] The former peoples of the Confederate South in the American Civil War and the German Empire in World War I both created post-war mythologies (the Lost Cause in the former and the Stab-in-the-back Myth in the latter) of "glorious" defeat in unfair fights. [9] The post-war experience of Germany after World War Two, however, is much more complex and provoked reactions from a sense of German national guilt [10] to collective ignorance. [11] A common national response to these traumas is repeated calls for national unity and moral purification, as in the post-9/11 United States [12] or post-war Japan. [13]

Examples

See also

Related Research Articles

The term collective trauma calls attention to the "psychological reactions to a traumatic event that affect[s] an entire society." Collective trauma does not only represent a historical fact or event, but is a collective memory of an awful event that happened to that group of people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Turkish Armed Forces</span> Combined military forces of Turkey

The Turkish Armed Forces are the military forces of the Republic of Turkey. The Turkish Armed Forces consist of the General Staff, the Land Forces, the Naval Forces and the Air Forces. The Chief of the General Staff is the Commander of the Armed Forces. In wartime, the Chief of the General Staff acts as the Commander-in-Chief on behalf of the President, who represents the Supreme Military Command of the TAF on behalf of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Coordinating the military relations of the TAF with other NATO member states and friendly states is the responsibility of the General Staff.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocide denial</span> Attempt to deny the scale and severity of genocide

Genocide denial is the attempt to deny or minimize the scale and severity of an instance of genocide. Denial is an integral part of genocide and includes the secret planning of genocide, propaganda while the genocide is going on, and destruction of evidence of mass killings. According to genocide researcher Gregory Stanton, denial "is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres".

Repressed memory is a controversial, and largely scientifically discredited, psychiatric phenomenon which involves an inability to recall autobiographical information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature. The concept originated in psychoanalytic theory where repression is understood as a defense mechanism that excludes painful experiences and unacceptable impulses from consciousness. Repressed memory is presently considered largely unsupported by research. Sigmund Freud initially claimed the memories of historical childhood trauma could be repressed, while unconsciously influencing present behavior and emotional responding; he later revised this belief.

Psychological trauma is an emotional response caused by severe distressing events such as accidents, violence, sexual assault, terror, or sensory overload.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sayfo</span> Assyrian genocide (1914–1924)

The Sayfo or the Seyfo, also known as the Assyrian genocide, was the mass slaughter and deportation of Assyrian/Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan province by Ottoman forces and some Kurdish tribes during World War I.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collective memory</span> Shared knowledge and values of a social group

Collective memory refers to the shared pool of memories, knowledge and information of a social group that is significantly associated with the group's identity. The English phrase "collective memory" and the equivalent French phrase "la mémoire collective" appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century. The philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs analyzed and advanced the concept of the collective memory in the book Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (1925). Collective memory can be constructed, shared, and passed on by large and small social groups. Examples of these groups can include nations, generations, communities, among others. Collective memory has been a topic of interest and research across a number of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, and anthropology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kahramanmaraş</span> Metropolitan municipality in Mediterranean, Turkey

Kahramanmaraş, historically Marash and Germanicea, is a city in the Mediterranean region of Turkey and the administrative centre of Kahramanmaraş province. After 1973, Maraş was officially named Kahramanmaraş with the prefix kahraman to commemorate the Battle of Marash. The city lies on a plain at the foot of Mount Ahır.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1965 Yerevan demonstrations</span>

The 1965 Yerevan demonstrations took place in Yerevan, Armenia on 24 April 1965, on the 50th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. It is said that this event constitutes the first step in the struggle for the recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Armenian genocide denial</span> Fringe theory that the Armenian genocide did not occur

Armenian genocide denial is the claim that the Ottoman Empire and its ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), did not commit genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I—a crime documented in a large body of evidence and affirmed by the vast majority of scholars. The perpetrators denied the genocide as they carried it out, claiming that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were resettled for military reasons, not exterminated. In the genocide's aftermath, incriminating documents were systematically destroyed, and denial has been the policy of every government of the Republic of Turkey, as of 2023, and later adopted by the Republic of Azerbaijan, as of 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denialism</span> Persons choice to deny psychologically uncomfortable truth

In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Armenian resistance during the Armenian genocide</span> Armenian resistance in the Ottoman Empire during WWI

Armenian resistance included military, political, and humanitarian efforts to counter Ottoman forces and mitigate the Armenian genocide during the first World War. Early in World War I, the Ottoman Empire commenced efforts to eradicate Armenian culture and eliminate Armenian life, through acts of killing and death marches into uninhabitable deserts and mountain regions. The result was the homogenisation of the Ottoman Empire and elimination of 90% of the Armenian Ottoman population.

Politics of memory is the organisation of collective memory by political agents; the political means by which events are remembered and recorded, or discarded. Eventually, politics of memory may determine the way history is written and passed on, hence the terms history politics or politics of history. The politics of history is the effects of political influence on the representation or study of historical topics, commonly associated with the totalitarian state which use propaganda and other means to impose a specific version of history with the goal of eliminating competing perspectives about the past. In order to achieve this goal, memory regimes resort to different means such as narrating, strategic silencing, performing or renaming/remapping.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transgenerational trauma</span> Psychological trauma

Transgenerational trauma is the psychological and physiological effects that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group. The primary modes of transmission are the uterine environment during pregnancy causing epigenetic changes in the developing embryo, and the shared family environment of the infant causing psychological, behavioral and social changes in the individual. The term intergenerational transmission refers to instances whereby the traumatic effects are passed down from the directly traumatized generation [F0] to their offspring [F1], and transgenerational transmission is when the offspring [F1] then pass the effects down to descendants who have not been exposed to the initial traumatic event - at least the grandchildren [F2] of the original sufferer for males, and their great-grandchildren [F3] for females.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kosovo Myth</span> Serbian nation-building myth

The Kosovo Myth, also known as the Kosovo Cult and the Kosovo Legend, is a Serbian national myth based on legends about events related to the Battle of Kosovo (1389). It has been a subject in Serbian folklore and literary tradition and has been cultivated oral epic poetry and guslar poems. The final form of the legend was not created immediately after the battle but evolved from different originators into various versions. In its modern form it emerged in 19th-century Serbia and served as an important constitutive element of the national identity of modern Serbia and its politics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Effects of genocide on youth</span>

The effects of genocide on youth include psychological and demographic effects that affect the transition into adulthood. These effects are also seen in future generations of youth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National memory</span> Form of collective memory defined by shared experiences and culture

National memory is a form of collective memory defined by shared experiences and culture. It is an integral part to national identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kobi Peleg</span>

Kobi (Jacob) Peleg is an Israeli professor of Emergency and Disaster Management at Tel-Aviv University, and formerly the director of the Israel National Center for Trauma & Emergency Medicine Research at the Gertner Institute for Epidemiology and Health Policy Research.

The culture of violence theory addresses the pervasiveness of specific violent patterns within a societal dimension. The concept of violence being ingrained in Western society and culture has been around for at least the 20th century. Developed from structural violence, as research progressed the notion that a culture can sanction violent acts developed into what we know as culture of violence theory today. Two prominent examples of culture legitimizing violence can be seen in rape myths and victim blaming. Rape myths lead to misconstrued notions of blame; it is common for the responsibility associated with the rape to be placed on the victim rather than the offender.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocide justification</span> Attempts to claim genocide is a moral action

Genocide justification is the claim that a genocide is morally excusable or necessary, in contrast to genocide denial, which rejects that genocide occurred. Perpetrators often claim that the genocide victims presented a serious threat, meaning that their killing was legitimate self-defense of a nation or state. According to modern international criminal law, there can be no excuse for genocide.

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