Transcendence: Healing Our Collective Story

Part Two: What Is Collective Trauma

© Richard Bolstad

Preframes: The Challenges of Talking About Collective Trauma

All the work that is done helping people become resilient, and helping them recover from traumatic events, will be ineffective if we do not confront the larger social forces which create most of those individual crises. Since I first taught trauma recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, it has been clear to me that even teaching individual resilience skills is simply sending ambulances to the bottom of the cliff of history. My aim in my work this year is to stop what is happening at the top. In this presentation I plan to quote extensively from others because the reframing of collective trauma is so contentious that it helps to understand “where”, socially, the speaker is coming from, in order to validate their opinion. Part of social traumatization involves one group of people speaking for (and thus overriding) another group of people. What I as a white heterosexual male, brought up in a Christian family, in a wealthy capitalist country might genuinely be able to say is quite different to what an African American woman, a Māori elder, an LGBTQIA+ Russian citizen or a Jewish holocaust survivor might legitimately be able to say. I also want to point out that the following sections are likely to be distressing to read. By definition we are going to discuss the darkest stories of history. Also, I am also certainly going to question some of your favorite beliefs and values, because we all share collective responses that I believe are created out of trauma. My rationale is that if you read carefully, the writers I quote are also pointing to resilient and inspiring choices we can make in the face of these events. I’m going to use examples from the Jewish Holocaust, from British Colonialism in Aotearoa / New Zealand, from Russian Imperialism, from Christian Fundamentalism and from the United States of America. I’m not claiming these are comprehensive samples, merely that they are examples of the key themes I want to note about what collective trauma is like.

Applying the IFS (Internal Family Systems) Model to Social and Cultural Systems

I am not the first writer to consider how to apply insights about individual psychological trauma to the larger social systems in which that trauma is embedded. In the last 3 years, as the covid-19 pandemic spread across the planet, it has interacted with cultural trauma, and affected the already socially disadvantaged far more than the advantaged. A New Zealand study noted “The results found that 13 percent of those surveyed in July 2021 were resistant to vaccinations. It found many of those had adverse childhood experiences, and that vaccine hesitancy could reflect a lifetime of mistrust. Dunedin Study associate director Professor Terrie Moffitt explains “What they appear to learn during childhood is if anyone comes to you with authority, they’re just trying to get something, and they don’t care about you, they’ll take advantage,” … She said those now opposed had scored lower on information processing speed, reading level and verbal skills as children, and as 45-year-olds just before the pandemic, had less practical, everyday health knowledge. [This] suggests they may have lacked the knowledge they needed to make health decisions in the stress of the pandemic,”” (Radio New Zealand, 2022).

IFS is an example of a therapeutic model that has explored this territory. Associate Professors of Psychiatry, Richard Schwartz and Martha Sweezy, in their book Internal Family Systems Therapy, apply the principles developed by family therapists such as Virginia Satir, to encourage clients to communicate with their internal “parts” respectfully. Their model has obvious parallels with NLP in general and Mental Space Psychology in particular. Schwartz also explains “In the early days of developing IFS, I (RS) noticed strong parallels between my clients’ inner systems and the outer systems in which they were embedded, including systems that were larger than the family. Like trauma survivors, countries that have been attacked carry certain beliefs about danger and are at risk of depending on extremely protective parts who remain frozen in the past and overreact to potential threats. For example, following 9/11, then Vice President Dick Cheney said, “If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response” (Suskind, 2006, p. 62).” (Schwartz and Sweezy, p. 240-252)

Schwartz focuses especially on United States culture: “Like many trauma survivors, such national leaders take a rigid, authoritarian approach. They disdain the system’s weak, vulnerable elements, provoke others both within and outside of the system, and use the conflicts they generate to further justify their hegemony.” He suggests that in USA, a large percentage of the population is treated like what he calls “exiled parts” of a person, rejected by the person’s internal “management”: “The American legacy burdens of racism, patriarchy, individualism, and materialism imbue protectors with this kind of contempt. As a result the United States not only exiles a greater percentage of its population than any other Western nation, it has less compassion and more contempt for its exiled populations, which, in turn, are at high risk of self-contempt. This is completely parallel to the inner systems of abuse survivors, whose managers hate vulnerability and whose vulnerable parts believe they deserve abuse.” (Schwartz and Sweezy, p. 240-252)

Richard Schwartz’ vision is of a renewed world. “What would the United States look like if we could unload our legacy burdens and have more Self-leadership? Our eyes and hearts would open to exiles and the destruction we are inflicting on the planet. This awakening would expedite our efforts to reverse climate change, economic inequity, and discrimination. We would offer treatment rather than punishment for destructive firefighters [by “Firefighters” he refers to people coping with immediate crises; in IFS this term could also refer to “parts” of people that are set up to cope with immediate crises], as they have done in Portugal with drug users. We would stop attacking firefighter activities, which are the result of exiling so many people nationally and globally, and would listen instead to their voices. We would value relationships over material possessions and power.  Our decreased avarice and Self-led foreign relations would reduce the number of our enemies globally. We would be less attracted to demagogues who appear strong but are cruel and full of empty promises.”

Richard Schwartz has linked into the PACE community in a task force that has allowed the IFS model to be used by USA government agencies. PACE is a group that aims to Prevent Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), heal trauma and build community resilience. During the Covid-19 pandemic, they set up group promoting a community based trauma-informed approach to medical and vaccine fear: a group of Medical Practitioners and Trauma Recovery specialists including Jesse Kohler, Chris Rutgers, Lissa Rankin, Jeffrey Rediger, Peter Levine, Gabor Mate, Resmaa Menakem, Richard Schwartz, Laurence Heller, Robert Schwarz, Vicki Robinson, Jaja Chem, Sandy Bloom, Alisha Moreland-Capuia, and Daniel Press. This group advised President Biden on his approach to vaccine hesitancy. They argued that a large section of the USA community feels alienated from both government and medical action, and for good reason: “Public trust in government is at an all-time low: Less than one-quarter of Americans say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (22%). So many policy decisions that impact millions of people’s lives are made by the private interests of a few who can fund lobbyists and political campaigns.” (Kohler, 2021)

PACE sees the core community traumas involved as a) Medical system trauma, b) Pharmaceutical industry trauma, c) Racial trauma, and d) Government/Political trauma; and they see the South African “Truth and Reconciliation” system as a model of their future aims. “Telling the truth helps rebuild lost trust, so acknowledging the systems level trauma that has impacted so many individuals, families, and communities is going to be a key first step to any effective strategy in addressing vaccine fear. Much like the Truth & Reconciliation process, it will be impossible to re-establish trust without these institutions taking ownership of past actions that have been traumatizing and followed with a compassionate and empathetic message that mistrust/fear around the vaccine makes total sense and is completely valid.” (Kohler, 2021)

I begin by acknowledging the work of IFS for two reasons. One is that it is a psychotherapeutic movement similar to the one I am hoping to support within my own NLP/Coaching/Hypnotherapy community. And secondly, it is a movement which has started with an analysis of its own dominant culture (The dominant culture of the Unites States of America). Its critique of that culture draws attention to some of the key social issues of our time (Patriarchy, Racism) and to the hidden trauma of the “dominant” culture, the trauma that Karl Marx called “alienation” (Individualism, Materialism). In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1844/1932), Marx identified four types of alienation that occur to the worker labouring under a capitalist system of industrial production. They are alienation of the worker from their product (the workers do not own what they produce), from the act of production (the workers do not decide even how they produce), from their Gattungswesen (‘species-essence’ – the workers are converted from being creative humans into being cogs in a machine) and from other workers (the workers cannot arrange what they do with other workers and create a society that nurtures them collectively). Marx hoped to change that: “Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have, in two ways, affirmed himself, and the other person. (i) In my production I would have expressed my individuality, its specific character, and, therefore, enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also, when looking at the object, I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses, and, hence, a power beyond all doubt. (ii) In your enjoyment, or use, of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man’s essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man’s essential nature … Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.” (Marx, 1844).

Social Representations Theory: Victim, Perpetrator, and “Memory Wars”

Collective trauma, then, exists in any culture. Historically, it is important to acknowledge that all our experiences are not equally traumatic though. Here I am planning to quote extensively from those who have experiences of cultural trauma which I cannot claim to adequately understand myself. Gilad Herschberger presents a Jewish perspective on collective trauma and argues that collective trauma (as a stored memory event) has both adaptive and non-adaptive consequences. I quote his analysis extensively because it makes so many points that can be understood intuitively, and yet need to be referenced, as he does. “Similarly, the dictum ‘never again’ referring to the Holocaust is understood by some Israeli Jews as a call to arms to ensure that the Jewish people will never face the threat of annihilation again. For others, this same history delivers the moral imperative that Jews, having suffered the consequences of extreme racial hatred, should be at the forefront of the struggle against all forms of prejudice and discrimination, and should be especially cautious to not victimize others (Bauer, 1979; Klar et al., 2013). Thus, there appear to be individual differences in the way group members remember collective trauma and in the meaning they derive from it. Social Representations Theory provides a framework to understand variations in the understanding of history and how these variations impact the construction of meaning. The study of social representations of history indicates a growing understanding that the collective representation of history does not necessarily reflect the historical truth, but rather is a combination of historical facts with shared myths and beliefs that are essential in forming and maintaining group identity (e.g.,  Reicher and Hopkins, 2001; Liu and Hilton, 2005).” (Hirschberger, 2018, p. 7-8)

He summarises the positive effects of collective trauma identification thus: “For victims of collective trauma meaning is established by: (a) passing down culturally-derived teachings and traditions about threat that promote group preservation; (b) these traditions of threat amplify existential concerns and increase the motivation to embed the trauma into a symbolic system of meaning; (c) trauma fosters the sense of a collective self that is transgenerational thereby promoting a sense of meaning and mitigating existential threat; (d) the sense of an historic collective self also increases group cohesion and group identification that function to create meaning and alleviate existential concerns; (e) the profound sense of meaning that is borne out of collective trauma perpetuates the memory of the trauma and the reluctance to close the door on the past; (f) Over time collective trauma becomes the epicentre of group identity, and the lens through which group members understand their social environment.” (Hirschberger, 2018, p. 2)

Hirschberger notes that trauma in communities, like trauma in individuals, is an identity level issue, both for those who have been labelled “victims” and those labelled “perpetrators”. He says about identified “perpetrators groups” that: “For members of perpetrator groups, collective trauma represents an identity threat (Branscombe et al., 1999), as it creates tension between the desire to view the group in a positive light (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), and the acknowledgment of severe moral transgressions in its past. The inability to reconcile the character of the group in the present with its character in the past may motivate group members, primarily high identifiers, to perceive an historical discontinuity of the group that serves to distance present group members from past offenders (Roth et al., 2017). Sometimes this discontinuity is reflected in the motivation to close the door on history and never look back (Imhoff et al., 2017), and sometimes the thorny chapters of a group’s history are glossed over creating an uncomfortable gap in collective memory – an absence suggesting a presence. Members of perpetrator groups may deal with the dark chapter in their history by thoroughly denying the events, disowning them and refusing to take any responsibility for them. But, more often than not, reactions to an uncomfortable history will take on a more nuanced form with group members reconstructing the trauma in a manner that is more palatable, and representing the trauma in a manner that reduces collective responsibility. In some cases, the dissonance between current group values and past behavior are so great that disaffiliation from the group remains the only viable option ( ˇCehaji´c and Brown, 2010; Hirschberger et al., 2016b).” (Hirschberger, 2018, p. 2)

For Jewish people, Germany is of obvious interest in this context. Hirschberger discusses the different Jewish approaches to the German people: “Germany has undergone significant transformation and a conscious effort to sever any continuity between Germany today and the Third Reich (Hein and Selden, 2000). Many of Germany’s neighbors such as France (Hanke et al., 2013) and Poland (Imhoff et al., 2017) seem to recognize this transformation, and are able to separate the Germany of the past from that of the present. Israeli Jews, however, show a more ambivalent reaction, and a greater reluctance to close the book on the Holocaust and achieve closure; they are also more likely to conflate the past with the present, such that their attitudes toward contemporary Germany are contingent on their attributions for the past (Imhoff et al., 2017). Because the Holocaust is but the tragic climax of centuries of German and European anti-Semitism, many Jews are reluctant to let go of the past, and when engaging with contemporary Germans even on issues unrelated to the past, the Holocaust is often implicitly present (Imhoff, 2009)…. Some, attributing an internal essence have described Germans as an “aggressor throughout the ages” (Hearnshaw, 1940), and as having a set of permanent characteristics that underlie their aggression: “if the criteria of a trait are permanence and lack of specificity we may rightly call aggressiveness a trait of these individuals” (Schreier, 1943, p. 211). Contemporary essentialist accounts focus on fixed worldviews and belief systems that are claimed to be uniquely characteristic of German society (Dawidowicz, 1975; Goldhagen, 1996; Imhoff et al., 2017). Others reject the notion of an internal evil essence underlying evil acts and instead attribute wrongdoings to external forces working on the perpetrator group such as coercion by a powerful and ruthless regime. In the case of Germany, Nazi terror and fear among ordinary Germans could be offered as an alternative attribution for the horrors committed by this group (Imhoff et al., 2017). Another attribution that places the onus on the situation and not the group suggests that historical crimes are the end result of extremely harsh social and economic conditions that facilitated the rise of aggressive dictators (Imhoff et al., 2017). Historian Christopher Browning invokes the social psychological processes of conformity, compliance, and pluralistic ignorance to explain the transformation of ordinary men to mass murderers (Browning, 1992).” (Hirschberger, 2018, p. 5,8) This is an issue we will reflect on again later, using the Russian example.

Hirschberger warns that an over-empathic description of the situation could also have its risks, because it allows people to pretend that nothing bad happened: “These different attributions underlie different representations of history, and these different representations have a profound influence on the meaning derived from the trauma. Attributing perpetrators’ behaviors to an internal, evil essence highlights the moral distinction between victim and perpetrator, and consolidates the morally superior position of the victim group; it also allows victims to avoid the uncomfortable question of whether they would have behaved similarly under similar conditions. For perpetrator groups, however, this attribution is extremely threatening; it leaves the group forever guilty of the past, with each generation carrying the burden of their ancestors’ crimes; it also forestalls any process of change, as changing the inner essence of the group is near impossible. To reconstruct a meaningful and positive group identity in the aftermath of group wrongdoings, members of perpetrator groups are motivated to attribute historical crimes to external, uncontrollable circumstances (Imhoff et al., 2017), a process that corresponds to the ultimate attribution error (Pettigrew, 1979) – a group level attribution error wherein people tend to attribute negative in-group behavior to external causes. This absolves them from the burden of guilt; allows them to draw a clear distinction between current group members and past members; and most importantly enables them to formulate a social representation of the group that isolates the dark episode as an uncharacteristic failing. In the words of Alexander Gauland, Germany’s far-right AfD leader, “Hitler and the Nazis are just bird shit on the 1000 years old successful German history.” ” (Hirschberger, 2018, p. 8)

“Social representations of history, therefore, are not merely attempts to understand what happened, but are building blocks in the construction of social identity. The intergroup animosity that existed during the trauma is often replaced with memory wars over the attributions made for the trauma and the significance of the trauma for the image of both victim and perpetrator groups. These tacit memory wars that take place between victim and perpetrator groups and within each one of these groups constitute an ongoing struggle with a troubling history and the inter- and intra-group negotiation of collective meaning.” (Hirschberger, 2018, p. 8). Jeffrey Alexander ( 2012, p. 97) gives many examples of these memory wars, the following one from an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. “Yad Vashem [the Holocaust museum in Israel] has fired an instructor who compared the trauma of Jewish Holocaust survivors with the trauma experienced by the Palestinian people in Israel’s War of Independence. Itamar Shapira, 29, of Jerusalem, was fired before Passover from his job as a docent at the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, after a teacher with a group of yeshiva students from Efrat made a complaint. Shapira had worked at Yad Vashem for three and a half years . . . Shapira confirmed, in a telephone conversation with Haaretz, that he had spoken to visitors about the 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin. He said he did so because the ruins of the Arab village, today a part of Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul neighborhood, can be seen as one leaves Yad Vashem. “Yad Vashem talks about the Holocaust survivors’ arrival in Israel and about creating a refuge here for the world’s Jews. I said there are people who lived on this land and mentioned that there are other traumas that provide other nations with motivation,” Shapira said. “The Holocaust moved us to establish a Jewish state and the Palestinian nation’s trauma is moving it to seek self-determination, identity, land and dignity, just as Zionism sought these things,” he said.”

Whichever side of this memory war we stand on, the Holocaust provides an extraordinary research group for studying the epigenetic effects of trauma (the extent to which traumatic responses are encoded in information around the genes and passed on to the next generation). As an example, FKBP5 site methylation (epigenetic change) was higher than normal for holocaust survivors, but lower than normal for their children. (Yehuda et alia, 2016)

Kaupapa Māori: Colonization and Māori Approaches to Cultural Healing in Aotearoa

While the Jewish Holocaust is often viewed as the quintessential example of historical trauma, this is actually a recent framing of it (the very term holocaust came into popular use many years after the Second World War), and is much debated. Jeffrey Alexander 2012, p. 31-38) shows how this framing of “the holocaust” emerged, and contrasts his Social Process Theory (that collective trauma is socially constructed) to the Naturalistic Fallacy (That collective trauma is a series of events only). He suggests four ways in which social trauma is modified, and these reflect the “Patterns of Chronicity” which we see in individual traumatization (Bolstad, 2020).

Social Patterns of Chronicity

  • Blame Frames. Social construction requires defining what events were destructive, and who is the primary perpetrator. Asking “Why did this happen to us?” may refocus trauma on fake enemies or nominalizations (“Capitalism”, “Colonialism”, “Cultural Marxism”), ignoring multi-factor causation.
  • Scope and Category Expansion. Social construction requires framing the events as particular or general/eternal, and as a sign of disaster or rebirth. The question “What if this keeps happening?” shapes either a historical view (we can affect history) or a politics of eternity or inevitability.
  • Distorted Cognition. Trauma itself distorts cognition, causing black and white thinking, paranoia and the confabulation of conspiracy theories.
  • Identity Issues. As with individual trauma, the force of the trauma means that it becomes an identity threatening event most of all, focused not just on fear of pain and death, but on humiliation, loss of trust in human beings, shame, and a victim identity. Identity damage removes the sense of being “at cause” and able to shape a better future.

In this section I want to look at colonial experiences. Colonialism arguably is as old as humanity (the Greek city states, for example, established many colonies around the Black Sea, Italy and the Eastern Aegean). However its emergence as a world-defining movement happened in the last 5 centuries after the European discovery of the Americas and the establishment of European dominion over lands across the globe. James Maurice Blaut (1993) discusses the core ideology which justified this dominance of the world by European powers, and which I grew up believing: the notion that something intrinsically better about “Europeans” made them “natural” rulers of the world. This conceit is pernicious enough so that it easily explains even trauma-recovery as a primarily European invention, and transfers to trauma recovery work the same core values and beliefs that have contaminated the dominant cultures of the world, such as individualism and materialism. Colonialism is not just one minor trend in world history, arguably, it is the dominant trend of the last half millennium.

Michael Rothberg contrasts the way trauma is described in written novels by people from the dominant world culture and people subordinated by that culture. He says that black, postcolonial, indigenous, feminist and queer theories of trauma understand trauma as “collective, spatial, and material (instead of individual, temporal and linguistic)” (Rothberg, 2008, p.228). They also frame it mythically and poetically, rather than purely rationally. “We may need to wander amidst multiple ruins and practice an archaeology of the collective imagination.” (Rothberg, 2008, p. 233). Furthermore, anti-colonialist theories point out that “canonical trauma theory tends to locate the trauma in the completed past of a singular event-while colonial and postcolonial traumas persist into the present.” (Rothberg, 2008, p. 230). Colonization not only creates new meaning like all traumatic events, but it also systematically eliminates the meaning-making systems of the colonized culture.

The following discussion largely reports on thinking in the New Zealand Māori community about violence within Māori families. Once again, I will quote extensively from the original work, so as to ensure that I give a voice correctly to the Māori writers, rather than extracting out-of-context quotes: “Over the past ten years we have seen an increase in the use of historical trauma theory alongside Kaupapa Māori [Māori philosophy and framework] theory and practice as a means by which to further understand the collective impact of trauma from colonization upon Māori and Indigenous peoples.” (Pihama, Cameron and Te Ngaropi, 2019).

The holistic conception of healing and psychological health is almost perplexing to those who have not grown up in an indigenous culture. Leonie Pihama, Ngaropi Cameron, and Rihi Te Nana explain, for example, that “The development of healthy relationships for Māori is directly related to the quality of the whanau [extended family grouping], hapū [sub tribal group] and iwi [tribal group] relationships. Tikanga [Maori practices and protocols] provides the ancestral knowledge and practices that sit at the centre of Māori relationships. Communication of those tikanga forms the basis of a Māori world view. This, alongside whakapapa [use of Māori cultural genealogical templates], brings to the fore collective obligations and responsibilities for each other in the wider sense of wellbeing. Traditional Māori society understood and accepted such arrangements as a key facet of life and people were engaged in philosophical thought and discussion that organised and ordered people in relation to each other and to the natural world. This always included a spiritual dimension, enabling an understanding that everything is interconnected on cultural, physical, intellectual and spiritual levels and that what happened in your whānau affected all members of the whānau. Collective connectedness is critical for whānau wellbeing. This includes ensuring that we have a secure sense of our relationships to each other and to our lands. Whānau consistently reference maunga [ancestral mountain], whenua [land], moana [sea] and awa [river] both as a part of our cultural identity and in acknowledgement of our obligations to care for our environment as a part of our wider cultural relationships.” (Pihama, Cameron and Te Nana, 2019: all translations are inserted from the article’s own glossary)

“The term “historical trauma” was initially coined in relation to understanding the traumatic experiences of holocaust survivors and the subsequent impact of those experiences on following generations (Brave Heart, 2000; Evans-Campbell, 2008). It has also been used in discussion of the intergenerational impact of Japanese concentration camps during WWII (Drinnon, 1987; Howard, 2008; Nagata, 1991). Brave Heart and DeBruyn (1998) argue that holocaust survivor literature provides analysis and applied knowledge that informs historical trauma theory for Indigenous peoples. It is powerfully argued by Indigenous scholars that the genocidal and ethnocidal acts perpetuated against Native peoples have caused intergenerational transfer of trauma similar to that of descendants of holocaust survivors (Brave Heart & DeBruyn, 1998; Duran & Duran, 1995). However, it is also clearly stated that there are critical differences with regard to Jewish and Indigenous experiences of historical trauma (Whitbeck, Adams, Hoyt & Chen, 2004). In particular it is important to understand that for Indigenous people we recognise that issues of historical trauma and loss are not seen as a singular event but are ongoing. What these authors highlight is that colonisation, by its very systemic and structural nature, includes multiple collective traumatic events that affect Indigenous peoples.” (Pihama, Cameron and Te Nana, 2019)

“Research highlights that there are multiple layers of historical colonial disruption experienced by Māori people, including acts of dispossession of lands and resources; the marginalisation and denial of language, culture and knowledge forms; the imposition of colonial gendered beliefs and practices; the entrenchment of the nuclear family; the widespread impact of disease, alcohol, Christianity, trade and muskets; the establishment of Western education systems grounded upon policies of assimilation and integration; and the institution of colonial governmental systems which subsumed Māori sovereignty and self-determination (Walker, 1996; Simon, 1998; Simon & Smith, 2001). Wirihana and Smith (2014) note that historical trauma for Māori began with the loss of entire communities with colonial contact and wars and has been maintained through social, cultural, economic, spiritual domination that is maintained and reproduced through legal imperialism. This facilitates the disruption of language, cultural practices and of the socio-cultural systems that ensured the wellbeing of whānau, including the rupturing of “the sacredness of relationships between men and women and destroyed the nurturing protective environments required for child rearing” (p.201). In exploring the impact of historical trauma on Māori it has become clear that the terminology associated with historical trauma theory is considered controversial in New Zealand. This is evidenced by the extreme reactions to Māori using the term “holocaust” in relation to the colonisation and traumatic events experienced by our tūpuna [ancestors] (Turia, 2000). Starblanket (2018) has provided significant argument that the intentional removal and displacement of Indigenous children from their communities is an act of genocide. This is also the situation in Aotearoa [New Zealand].” (Pihama, Cameron and Te Nana, 2019)

Pihama, Cameron and Te Nana refer to Lakota studies of the effects of all this: “The literature shows that among holocaust survivors and their descendants, and in Lakota people, the range of historical trauma responses observed include depression; psychic numbing; difficulty recognising and expressing emotions; low self-esteem; poor affect tolerance; anger; elevated mortality rates from suicide and cardiovascular diseases; self-destructive behaviour; and may include substance abuse and self-medication (Brave Heart, 1999; Brave Heart & DeBruyn, 1998). It is argued that the generations of Native American people who face collective historical trauma experience both its present impact and “historical unresolved grief,” where those generations experience a “pervasive sense of pain” and an “incomplete mourning of those events.”” (Pihama, Cameron and Te Nana, 2019)

Lakota studies show that orthodox Western categories such as PTSD are not likely to capture the seriousness of the intergenerational cascade of trauma that is triggered by current events. “Brave Heart (2005) makes an important distinction, stating: “We are survivors of genocide. We may have a higher trauma threshold due to our severe chronic trauma so we may not fit the PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) criteria … We are survivors of intergenerational trauma, not just traumas within our lifespan. Our culture and history also influence the way we show our symptoms and the way in which we manifest our symptoms. Our grief is different from the dominant culture’s grief (p.2-3).” (Pihama, Cameron and Te Nana, 2019)

The writers indicate a model called “the Whānau Violence Framework” which sees there being three aspects to resolution of problems like family violence in Maori culture: 1) te ao Māori (the Māori world) 2) Te ao Hurihuri (contemporary reality) and 3) a transformative element which transcends and unifies both. “Other models of healing including Te Whare Tapa Wha (Durie, 2001 ); Te Wheke (Pere, 1988); and Āta (Pohatu, 2004) are considered to provide Māori understandings of healing within which all of the tikanga elements are seen as interconnected in order to restore and maintain balance. The need to be reflective as a process of enhancing notions of restoration and balance is a critical component to the strengthening of relationships (Lipsham, 2012). It is clear within the work of Kruger et al. (2004) that healing from whānau violence must centre Māori people, tino rangatiratanga [self-determination and sovereignty], kaupapa Māori [Maori philosophy and framework], te reo [Māori language and voice], tikanga [Māori practices and protocols] and mātauranga [Māori knowledge] as the solution.” (Pihama, Cameron and Te Nana, 2019: All translations are inserted from the article’s own glossary).

Religious and Spiritual Trauma Theory

The trauma that western religion has visited on the last two thousand years of civilization is usually known only by its historical manifestations, such as the crusades, the pogroms, the jihads, the inquisitions and witch burnings, the religious wars. It should be obvious looking at the story of colonization that authoritarian religion is not only externally murderous: it is the colonization of identity, the colonization of the mind, and paradoxically, it is also the moral “justification” that has been offered in almost every case of real world colonization. Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant, educator, and writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. The daughter of a Christian missionary, she holds a doctorate in Human Development and Family Studies from Pennsylvania State University, and is the author of “Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion”. She notes “The problem of religious damage has not received much attention, perhaps because Christianity is so much a part of our culture and real criticism is taboo. Just consider what we have done to so-called heretics throughout history. Religious damage may also seem less serious than other recovery issues such as alcoholism or child abuse. And since faith is thought of as a good thing in a world brimming with materialism, selfishness, and violence, many feel strange when complaining of church attendance or growing up in a religious home.” (Winell, 2013, p14)

Winell centres in on one doctrine above all others as leading to trauma in traditional religion, a doctrine that is foreign to most cultures that it simply cannot be believed. “In conservative Christianity you are told you are unacceptable. You are judged with regard to your relationship to God. Thus you can only be loved positionally, not essentially. And, contrary to any assumed ideal of Christian love, you cannot love others for their essence either. This is the horrible cost of the doctrine of original sin. Recovering from this unloving assumption is perhaps the core task when you leave the fold. It is also a discovery of great joy — to permit unconditional love for yourself and others.” (Winell, 2013, p14) This belief is present in many different religious groups, explicitly or implicitly. “I decided to concentrate on Christian fundamentalism because it has been my own personal experience, my clinical work, and my area of research. However, most of the central issues of psychological damage and recovery are true for other dogmatic religions as well, particularly Bible-based churches. Many groups with cult-like qualities also share the dangers described here. In working with clients in therapy, I have found this material relevant to former Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Seventh-Day Adventists, Emissaries of Divine Light, Scientologists, and others…. Christian fundamentalism is a blanket term that encompasses a variety of conservative sects (evangelicals, charismatics, Pentecostals), all of which take the Bible as the literal truth and require followers to accept Jesus as their personal savior. A central doctrine is that of original sin, which influences the rest of the belief system. God and Satan, along with angels and demons, are believed to be objective forces battling for human souls. The Second Coming of Christ is considered to be imminent, resulting in a final judgment of all humankind when individuals will be sent to heaven or hell for eternity.” (Winell, 2013, p17-18, 21)

This dualistic struggle between good and evil is profoundly judgemental and blaming, and it is no surprise that it regularly leads to extreme examples of religious violence, which embody the fear of hell and of the apocalypse that are being instilled into believers. “The consequences of religious fanaticism are inevitably serious and disturbing. There are cases of victimization, for example, where believers are swindled by televangelists, when cults practice isolation and brainwashing, when people suffer sexual abuse or physical punishment in the name of a God and a faith. Religious fanaticism taken to extremes has led to such horrors as the mass murder/suicide of hundreds of People’s Temple members in Guyana and more recently to the inferno that engulfed the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. Some people may dismiss these cases as bizarre and aberrant. Yet, they are only extensions of the fear-based apocalyptic thinking that permeates the ideology of many rigid religions. Christian fundamentalism can appear benign yet intolerance and mind control often lurk just beneath the surface.” (Winell, 2013, 23)

Christianity evolved from its gentle, prescriptive origins in Jesus teachings (positive recommendations or prescription), into a brutal proscriptive force (negative taboos or proscription). To understand how the rest of the world views this faith (which I grew up in), consider the crusades. Raymond of Aguilers was there to observe one of the so called “great moments” in the history of Christianity, when the great Crusades followed Pope Gregory’s instruction and conquered the city of Jerusalem, where Muslim, Jew and Christian had worshipped together in peace for centuries. The Pope insisted “Cursed be the man who holds back his sword from shedding blood.” Raymond describes the result in glowing terms. “Wonderful things were to be seen. Numbers of the Saracens were beheaded. Others were shot with arrows, or forced to jump from the towers; others were tortured for several days, then burned with flames. In the streets were seen piles of heads and hands and feet. One rode everywhere amid the corpses of men and horses. In the temple of Solomon, the horses waded in blood up to their knees, nay up to the bridle. It was a just and marvellous judgement of God, that this place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers.” (Haught, 1990, p 25-26). It is a great paradox that the nearest we have to a “Christian” (forgiving, loving, compassionate) leader in the Crusades is Salahuddin Ayyubi (Saladin), the Muslim general. When Saladin retook Jerusalem, the Christians waited for a massacre similar to the one they had inflicted. However, Salahuddin not only spared the Christians but treated them honorably, allowing those who wished to leave to do so in peace, and those who wished to stay to do so in harmony. By his restraint and peaceful treatment, Salahuddin was upholding the central tenets of Islam such as freedom of religion and protection of non-Muslims. Flash forward to the twenty-first century. Sadly, on September 17, 2001, a week after Muslim fundamentalists drove Christians, Jews and other Muslims leaping from the towers of New York, American President George W. Bush spoke of an ongoing religious war. “”My administration has a job to do. … We will rid the world of evil-doers…. This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile.” (Carroll, 2004). This was (tragically somewhat correctly) heard in the Middle East as a call to once again fill the streets of the Middle East with blood.

In the world today, we see that religious fundamentalism is woven into the fabric of the most repressive regimes. On 20 November 2022, Archbishop Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox church and close friend of Vladimir Putin reaffirmed the importance of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, saying that the future of the world depended on Russia’s invasion being successful. “I understand that on the future of our Fatherland, our people, our Church depends, in the full sense of the word, the future of the world,” the Primate emphasized. “Because today our Motherland defends those values ​​that put a barrier to apostasy, that is, the movement towards the end of time under the rule of the Antichrist.”” («… от будущего нашего Отечества, нашего народа, нашей Церкви зависит, в полном смысле слова, будущее мира, — подчеркнул Предстоятель. — Потому что сегодня наша Родина отстаивает те ценности, которые ставят заслон апостасии, то есть движению к концу времен под властью антихриста».) (Press Service of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, 2022). It is routine of course for conquerors to imply that they are saving the world. The Nazis inscribed on their belt buckles “Gott mit uns” (God with us) and Adolf Hitler explained in 1922 “My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them…. How terrific was his fight for the world against the Jewish poison.” (Baynes, 1942, p19-20).

The vast conspiracy of the Catholic Church to cover up almost routine world-wide sexual abuse of children in its institutions is well known (Falk, 2017, p. 250). However the mass-media religions have no monopoly on what has come to be called Religious Abuse and Spiritual Trauma. Geoffrey Falk in his book “Stripping the Gurus” looks at Hindu, Buddhist, and New Age gurus as well as the Christian Churches, exposing the continuous emergence of sexual abuse, slavery and violence in their ashrams and faith communities. Falk’s book, to be fair, catalogues evidence of merely “un-godlike” acts (such as Tony Robbins’ personal teacher Swami Muktananda stabbing students with a fork and installing a “secret passageway” from his room to the dormitory where teenage female students slept), but also catalogues acts which are clearly illegal and profoundly abusive (such as when Rajneesh/Osho had his disciples spike salad bars at ten restaurants in The Dalles, Oregon with salmonella bacteria, sickening over 700 people – Falk, 2017, p. 173). What is perhaps most disturbing is how committed followers are to their guru, even after he has been found guilty of mass murder. “When questioned in 1988 [i.e., a full ten years after the Jonestown mass suicides] about the Jim Jones group, [J. Gordon] Melton said, “This wasn’t a cult. This was a respectable, mainline Christian group” (Hassan, 2000).” (quoted in Falk, 2017, p. 447). On the other hand, breaking out of a cult is a painful process. Andrew Harvey explains “My life was forever altered by my experience in a [so-called] religious cult. Not only did I abandon my passions in life, I spent fifteen years following someone else’s path. When I finally awakened from my enchantment, I found myself with near-zero self-esteem, a lot of regret for many wasted years, and plenty of anger at my own naïvete, as well as being furious with my former group. I felt that a gigantic chunk of my real identity had been stolen from me without my conscious consent.” (quoted in Falk, 2017, p. 451).

Is All Culture a Trauma Response? The Russian Example

So far we have quoted from theories that identify historical trauma where Jewish, Maori, Lakota, Paestinian and African American people are considered as victims of collective trauma, and where those incorporated into religious cults are considered victims. We have looked at the Third Reich, the Russian Federation under Putin, the British Empire, the United States of America, Israel, and a number of Religious Sects as perpetrator groups. Some of our writers have also pointed out that the victim-persecutor dynamic is not eternally stable. A group who are victims in one context may be persecutors in another. In a much-quoted online video, ex-CIA undercover officer Amaryllis Fox (2016) points out two simple truths that she thinks her work has taught her: 1) Everybody believes they are the good guy, and 2) The only way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them. How this happens is that in the story that people tell themselves, it is they themselves who survived trauma.

Support for the Third Reich arose out of conspiracy beliefs that Germany had been unfairly treated and “sold out” (partially by Jewish politicians) at the end of the First World War, leading to the massive collapse of its economy in the 1920s under reparations and confiscation of industrial land. Support for Vladimir Putin’s takeover of the Russian Federation arose out of beliefs that Russia had been asset stripped by the west during the economic collapse of the 1990s that followed it being “betrayed” by leaders who broke apart the Soviet Union in what Putin called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century” (i.e. greater than World War II). Support for the British Empire arose out of beliefs that continental European countries were attempting to invade Britain (e.g. the Spanish Armada, the Napoleonic wars) and enslave its people to foreign religious and secular tyrants; countries who were securing the wealth of the emerging “third world markets” and who saw the British as little more than pirates, and later as “a nation of shopkeepers” (a phrase attributed to Napoleon but probably first said by French revolutionary Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac in 1794). In New Zealand, the British Crown famously was reluctant to approve colonization but was pressured by both religious reformers and by fears that French colonization was imminent. Support for the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land arose out of the sense of urgency that “never again” should the Jewish people be at the mercy of the non-Jews who had perpetrated 2000 years of pogroms and the holocaust. The United States of America above all presents itself as a bastion of freedom that was founded by groups escaping religious persecution, and by entrepreneurial free spirits who felt that people should be free to choose the government that is then taxing them. I am not defending these reframes, but merely pointing out that they existed in the minds of those who then, in each case, promoted their country as destined by God and History to rule the world.

The hints of collective trauma are evident in what we usually call “culture”. “Trauma in a person, decontextualised over time, looks like personality. Trauma in a family, decontextualised over time, looks like family traits. Trauma in a people, decontextualised over time, looks like culture.” – Resmaa Menakem, Trauma therapist and author of “My Grandmother’s Hands”. Alexander Ziperovich (Александр Циперович) explains the traumatic history of the Russian people in the 20th century: “If there exists a single origin point for all the misery and death now enveloping Ukraine, it might be the gray stone edifice of the Lubyanka, that notorious Moscow address that served as the KGB’s headquarters and pretrial detention, and which is now the home of the FSB, formerly Vladimir Putin’s office. This is where the historian can begin to understand the disease afflicting modern Russia, and which is being inflicted on Ukraine through a botched war of national annihilation. It’s a disease of unchecked authoritarianism, first and foremost, that lethal virus that is dictatorship. ….  This was rivaled in sheer enormity perhaps only by the Nazis’ system of terror. But unlike Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Dachau, this grim history has been all but blotted out by the current regime, though it remains very much unforgotten, and unresolved. What does it mean when a country represses memories this dark?” He answers by quoting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ““Why is Germany allowed to punish its evildoers and Russia is not? What kind of disastrous path lies ahead of us if we do not have the chance to purge ourselves of that putrefaction rotting inside our body? He warned us: “In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future.””

Russian historian and sociologist Dina Khapaeva (Дина Хапаева, Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology) explains plans to canonize Ivan the Terrible and Russian dreams of destroying civilization in a suicidal nuclear war. Understanding this profound historical traumatization of the Russian people is a key to deciding how to respond to the rise of Russian fascism. Khapaeva explains (2023) ““The idea of a ‘death cult’ and a ‘purifying apocalypse’ has long been deeply integrated in the Putinist discourse. You’ll even find it in his speeches from the 2010s: ‘We [Russians] will go to heaven, while they’ll just croak,’ and ‘What good is a world without Russia?’” she said.”

Where does such self-hatred come from? In her book “The Future is History”, Marsha Gessen (Мари́я Ге́ссен) explains just the last 100 years of the story: a story like the stories of people trapped in Mao’s China (say Wild Swans) or in Hitler’s Holocaust camps (Sophie’s Choice). It is explicitly about psychological trauma: it is a biographical horror story. Hundreds of thousands of people tortured to death by Stalin’s insanity, including tens of thousands whose crime was to be the first torturers themselves. Thousands who denounced their friends and family and saw them horribly killed, and had to find a way to live with the meaninglessness of it all. And the vast trauma of all the Russian people who live to this day in fear of facing that very truth, and who continue to claim that Stalin was a hero, merely because, after starting World War 2 in league with Hitler, he was betrayed and ended up sacrificing tens of millions of Russians. To believe that this awful self-destruction was Russia’s gift to the world is sick beyond words.

This is like an unacknowledged holocaust, and Gessen (on a Russian passport herself) points out that the complete inability of Russians to acknowledge what happened is what creates the ongoing trauma. She tells how Carl Rogers was horrified by his visit to the Soviet Union in 1987. He found that even “psychologists” simply could not listen to each other (they just shouted each other down) and they appeared to live in a strange world of make believe where everything was simultaneously perfect (publicly) and a disaster (privately, especially in their marriages). Yuri Levada (Ю́рий Алекса́ндрович Лева́да) was the pioneering Soviet Psychologist who did the social research showing why. A personality type he called “Homo Sovieticus” had been shaped by the Soviet system and was now dominant. This personality type was expressed in a series of “games” of reality denial, and had its greatest fear as the humiliation caused by exposure of these pretenses. Putin famously said how humiliated he was when, as a KGB officer in Dresden, he suddenly realized that the USSR had abandoned him and he had no power over the locals. He had to confront the reality of empire: the local people hated him.

“The Future is History” shows that modern Russian approaches to the world are still immersed in the ideological “doublethink” that survival in Soviet society required. For example, Gessen suggests that pretty much every Russian simultaneously knows that Russia is not in reality a unitary country but a vast empire held by brutal force (they are privately proud of this vastness, Gessen says), but almost no one can publicly acknowledge the political consequences, such as the destruction of regions, like Chechnya or Ukraine, that dare to rebel (Gessen, 2017, p. 47-66). Other writers point out that there is a Russian word “враньё” (vranyo) which refers to a lie that both teller and listener know is a lie, but which they pretend is true. The initial invasion of Crimea by the Russian Federation on 23 February, 2014 is an example of vranyo. “Overnight ten Russian military aircraft landed in Simferopol carrying paratroopers from the 76th Guards Division based in Pskov. By the following morning, servicemen in Russian uniforms without insignia had seized Crimea’s regional parliament and other key government buildings. They occupied the peninsula’s two airports and fanned out onto the streets of Simferopol and Sevastopol. Putin and Shoigu publicly and repeatedly denied that they were Moscow’s troops. ‘Anyone can buy Russian uniforms in a shop,’ Putin told Russian TV with his trademark smirk. The state-run Russian media, taking the cue, delightedly dubbed the mysterious troops ‘little green men’ and ‘polite people’.” (Owen, 2022, p. 100) The celebrations in Russia were intense, and within a few days, Putin said that “of course” the little green men were heroic Russian troops, and Crimea was an eternal part of the Russian territory.

The new fascist anti-modernism of Putin’s ideologue, Alexander Dugin (Александр Гельевич Дугин), is both a result of this reality denial, and the attempted solution. Dugin “offered an alternative view of Russian history, in which a century and a half of Mongol-Tatar rule had been not an age of destruction but, on the contrary, a vital cultural infusion that set Russia on a special path, distinct from Europe’s… What Russia really needed to prevent an orange revolution, said Dugin, was a new oprichnina, the reign of terror for which Czar Ivan IV was remembered as the Terrible.” (Gessen, 2017, p. 237, 244). He is not alone of course, in saying this. “In 1994, a Russian Orthodox bishop named Ioann Snychov published a book called “The Autocracy of the Spirit.” In it, he argued that terror is the best way to govern the Russian people, using Ivan the Terrible as an example: the famously brutal 16th-century tsar, in Snychov’s telling, was a “naturally soft and gentle” ruler who suffered greatly when he had to dole out punishment. The sect Snychov founded advocates for the canonization of all of Russia’s leaders.” (Kharpaeva, 2023). This cult of the brutal ruler goes hand in hand with the centuries-old paranoia of Russian society (Livers, 2020; Yablokov, 2018). Tsarist Russia, remember, was the source of the “Protocols of Zion” (Протоколы сионских мудрецов) which Hitler used to evidence the eternal danger of Jewish people (Rothstein, 2006). “Russian history over the last few centuries has been filled with fears of conspiracy: Jews, Freemasons and Catholics have been considered major enemies (Davis, 1971; Bagdasarian, 1999). Furthermore, as in the USA, the messianic idea of the ‘City upon the Hill’ (Goldberg, 2001) and Moscow as the Third Rome (Duncan, 2005) provided fertile soil for suspicion and fear of others who wanted to prevent it from fulfilling its global mission. … In the USA, conspiracy theories normally emerge from grassroots movements and are kept at the margins of official political discourse. In post-Soviet Russia the political and intellectual elites are major producers and disseminators of conspiracy theories…. Conspiracy theories play a crucial role in Russia’s turn to authoritarianism and have served as a trigger for numerous public campaigns to justify repressive legislation.” (Yablokov, 2018, p.2, 4).

Sacha de Vogel notes that there is a strong belief in Russian society that nothing can or even should be done about this by the “common people”. “Culturally, the common belief that politics and governance are the concerns of those with power, not of regular people, has produced widespread apathy and what activists decry as learned helplessness: many Russians are simply not interested in protest.” (de Vogel 2023). All these elements of “Russian culture”, as expressed so explicitly in Putin and Dugin’s thinking, are not personal oddities, they are not random, and they are not evidence of some fundamental evil in the Russian psyche. Vranyo is the lying to oneself that enables a people to survive the unthinkable brutality of collective subjugation to Tartar Khans, Muscovite Tsars, Soviet Stalinist officials and Putin. The fear of public humiliation and the absolute paranoia promoted by Russian leaders is the creation of an eternal “terror”, an endless hyperarousal of the amygdala. Russian citizens may be the persecutors in Ukraine and Chechnya, where they have been clearly committing horrific war crimes (Matthews, 2022, p. 68), but they too live in a nightmare. Sadly, they believe their nightmare is “the human condition” or at least “the Russian experience of the human condition”, and that it is up to their leaders to “fix”. Similar analyses could be made of most cultures across the planet: Russian culture is just (in 2023) one of the most on-display.

Cultural Belief Systems Frame Trauma

The very word “trauma”, used to refer to psychological distress such as we have been discussing, emerged at a specific time and place (out of the struggles of veterans of the US Army in Vietnam, actually). There are many other frames that peoples across the planet use for the kind of body responses we are discussing. In Russia itself, “stress”, “depression” and “PTSD” are western-framed ideas. Someone who experiences distress that brings them back to a certain set of memories will sometimes be diagnosed as having a somatic chronotope evoker: “The term “chronotope” is taken from Bakhtin (1981), indicating a certain space-time. Jane Yager (2009) in her review of Karl Schlögel’s Moscow Dreams (2008), a book on Moscow during the time of the Stalinist terror, describes Schlögel’s use of the term “chronotope” in the following way, which is very close to the usage we intend here: “the Moscow of 1937 as a chronotope, a specific and inextricable bundle of time and space whose defining features are despotic arbitrariness, suddenness, shock, attack out of nowhere, disappearance and the blurring of the line between reality and phantasm.” We argue that certain images and somatic symptoms have the power to evoke such a space-time, a specific chronotope.” (Hinton and Good, 2016, p. 98)

Similarly, as Pihama, Cameron and Te Nana (2019) say above, Native American writers consider that their experience is better described as “Historical Trauma”, meaning the sense of loss of a collective historical identity. “Duran (1995) posit that most of the ills that face the Native American communities—high rates of poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, violence, and poor health and mental health indicators—are a result of historical traumas that Native Americans have endured during the various stages of their colonization at the hands of Europeans and Americans. In Duran and Duran’s terms, historical traumas have resulted in soul wounds for many Native Americans. Describing what they, and others, call the American Indian Holocaust, Brave Heart and DeBruyn (1998), conceptual leaders in the field of historical trauma, concur and emphasize unresolved grief as central to the intergenerational effects of historical trauma. They argue that the tremendous losses incurred by Native Americans since the arrival of non-Indians to these lands—of loved ones, means of subsistence, lands, and language, for example—were amplified as traditional mechanisms for dealing with grief (primarily ceremonies and prayers) were outlawed and suppressed. In addition to the works of these leading thinkers, historical trauma has also begun to appear in the articles of social workers, nurses, and others who form the front lines of health care for Native Americans (Cedar Project Partnership et al. 2008; Hazel and Mohatt 2001; Jones-Saumty 2002; Moffitt 2004; Struthers and Lowe 2003; Weaver 1998).” (Ball and O’Nell in Hinton and Good, 2016, 336-337)

In this discussion, they also refer to the spiritual loss, often called “soul loss” in other cultures. ““Soul loss,” a type of syndrome common in many cultures in various forms (Rubel et al. 1984), is considered by Cambodians to occur when a trauma or any fright displaces the soul; this leads to symptoms like startle and a general state of hypervigilant fear. Cambodians often attribute symptoms like startle, hypervigilance, poor concentration, forgetfulness, and avoidance of trauma reminders to the soul’s not being secured in the body or being displaced from it. This soul “dislocation” is thought to be caused by a great fright such as upon being threatened with death by a Khmer Rouge soldier, seeing a ghost, hearing a sudden loud noise, or having a nightmare (Chhim 2012; Hinton et al. 2013b).” (Hinton and Good, 2016, p. 101)

Towards an Overall Theory of Social Trauma and Resilience

The need for an overall theory of “everything” is itself a cultural artefact and could be considered a traumatic response. However, we also live in a world where it is easier to act if we have a map that simplifies our choices. The principles which I invite us to use to create an overall model of social trauma recovery include these:

  1. Resilience is a Process. Trauma is not a separate thing, but a “nominalization” of the processes of responding to crisis events (breaks in the continuity of history) which prove later to be severely uncomfortable for the individual or to the social group. Resilience is a “nominalization” of the process of responding to crises adaptively.
  2. Responses Are Changeable. There are no intrinsically bad or maladaptive human beings and no irreversible psychological adaptions. Most individuals and most communities who adapt in some “traumatic” way to events can revisit and adjust their response to be more satisfying. Just as individuals can “reconsolidate” their memories and “reframe” their experiences so as to create a more enjoyable sense of their own identity and so as to create a more enjoyable life, so can communities of individuals.  
  3. Crises are Natural and/or Human-generated. Collective traumatic events can emerge from natural causes (such as earthquakes or plagues) and from interactions with other human groups (such as in wars, conquests, enslavement, tyranny, persecution, and social isolation).
  4. Individual Trauma is Normalized by “Culture”. Because many people in the community share the maladaptive responses in these cases, the responses appear “normal” and individuals do not so attempt to revisit and adjust their response as to “accept” and “live with” the cultural norms, including beliefs, values, religious beliefs, behavioural patterns, and forms of social and economic organization.
  5. Comparative Studies Help. Consequently, we can sometimes gain insight into what is culturally traumatised by comparing the responses in one community with the responses in other times and in other communities, particularly those communities that have long histories of stable and/or adaptive functioning.
  6. Social Change and Individual Change are Linked. There is no full individual change without changing the individual’s awareness of social change. An awareness of social resilience issues helps us create deeper individual change, and cumulative individual change enables easier social change.

Key Points:

  • Just as individuals can experience chronicity after traumatic events, so can whole societies.
  • The Internal Family Systems approach has looked at how to help people identify and recover from what they call “legacy” traumatic responses, passed down by cultural stories and epigenetic instructions that keep people on high alert from birth.
  • War, Totalitarian government, and Economic systems that disempower the vast majority and keep them afraid of starvation are common traumatizing events.
  •  Collective trauma is not just a biological process, however, but is due to patterns of social chronicity such as blame frames, seeing trauma as being eternal, paranoia, and the creation of a victim identity.
  •  The interpretation of collective traumatic experience can be inspiring (resilient) or profoundly “soul destroying” (chronicity).
  • Genocide, the Historical trauma of Colonization, and Religious trauma are significant major social traumas of our time in history. These three aspects come together in situations such as World War II and the current Russian rise of totalitarianism and invasion of Ukraine.
  • Loss of “soul” and loss of the cultural coping mechanisms which are essential to individual resilience are central to the harm collective trauma causes, and are sometimes “normalized” by culture.

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