Historical trauma


Historical trauma or collective trauma refers to the cumulative emotional harm of an individual or generation caused by a traumatic experience or event.
According to its advocates, collective trauma evokes a variety of responses, most prominently through substance abuse, which is used as a vehicle for attempting to numb pain. This model seeks to use this to explain other self-destructive behavior, such as suicidal thoughts and gestures, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, anger, violence, and difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions. Many historians and scholars believe the manifestations of violence and abuse in certain communities are directly associated with the unresolved grief that accompanies continued trauma.
Historical trauma, and its manifestations, are seen as an example of transgenerational trauma. For example, a pattern of paternal abandonment of a child might be seen across three generations, or the actions of an abusive parent might be seen in continued abuse across generations. These manifestations can also stem from the trauma of events, such as the witnessing of war, genocide, or death. For these populations that have witnessed these mass level traumas, several generations later these populations tend to have higher rates of disease.

Definition

The term collective trauma calls attention to the "psychological reactions to a traumatic event that affect 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.
American sociologist Kai Erikson was one of the first to document collective trauma in his book Everything in Its Path, which documented the aftermath of a catastrophic flood in 1972.
Gilad Hirschberger of Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel, defines the term:
Clarifying the term collective, Ursula König focused on two different levels of collective trauma:
  • Identity group level: Traumatisation can occur amongst various identity groups i.e. race, age, class, caste, religious and/or ethnic groups. Both size and group coherence may differ and different identity markers may overlap, influencing inter and intra-group dynamics.
  • Society-level: At the societal level, societies may be affected by traumatisation within a nation state or at a sub/transnational level, influencing the fabric of society as well as the interactions within and between societies.
According to these two distinctions, a collective trauma can only be defined as such if affects can be clearly defined at either level. For example, the traumatisation of many individuals may not be considered collective, unless their traumatic experiences are used as key identity markers in public discourses and/or as a way of self-expression/-definition. Once trauma of many individuals is framed and used as a collective identity marker we can speak of it as such.
Furthermore, a distinction can be made between collective identity markers which in practice are all highly interwoven:
  • Collective narratives
  • Collective emotions
  • Collective mental models/norms and values.

    History of research

first developed the concept of historical trauma while working with Lakota communities in the 1980s. Yellow Horse Brave Heart's scholarship focused on the ways in which the psychological and emotional traumas of colonisation, relocation, assimilation, and American Indian boarding schools have manifested within generations of the Lakota population. Yellow Horse Brave Heart's article "Wakiksuyapi: Carrying the Historical Trauma of the Lakota," published in 2000, compares the effects and manifestations of historical trauma on Holocaust survivors and Native American peoples. Her scholarship concluded that the manifestations of trauma, although produced by different events and actions, are exhibited in similar ways within each afflicted community.
Other significant original research on the mechanisms and transmission of intergenerational trauma has been done by scholars such as Daniel Schechter, whose work builds on the pioneers in this field such as: Judith Kestenberg, Dori Laub, Selma Fraiberg, Alicia Lieberman, Susan Coates, Charles Zeanah, Karlen Lyons-Ruth, Yael Danieli, Rachel Yehuda and others. Although each scholar focuses on a different population – such as Native Americans, African Americans, or Holocaust survivors – all have concluded that the mechanism and transmission of intergenerational trauma is abundant within communities that experience traumatic events. Daniel Schechter's work has included the study of experimental interventions that may lead to changes in trauma-associated mental representation and may help in the stopping of intergenerational cycles of violence.
Joy DeGruy's book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, analyzes the manifestation of historical trauma in African American populations, and its correlation to the lingering effects of slavery. In 2018, Dodging Bullets—Stories from Survivors of Historical Trauma, the first documentary film to chronicle historical trauma in Indian country, was released. It included interviews with scientist Rachel Yehuda, sociologist Melissa Walls, and Anton Treuer along with first hand testimonies of Dakota, Lakota, Ojibwe and Blackfeet tribal members.
While all of these contributions to this field of research are valuable bases of knowledge, it is also important to understand what type of limitations researchers are faced with when approaching such a complicated topic. The first thing to keep in mind is the individual nature of trauma itself. Each person experiences trauma in a different way and has a different definition of what trauma even is for that matter. In their 2014 study Mohatt, Thompson, Thai and Tebes address this issue directly saying “because trauma is a representation as opposed to an event, and because we cannot directly know the minds and lives of the past, we cannot assume that our way of responding to negative events is valid for prior generations. ”. This type of flaw is common when looking at topics that combine historical events and the feelings that people have regarding them. However, it does not mean that research is invalid, we must simply view it as a public narrative. At that point it not only keeps its original impact but actually gains some more traction and becomes a community advancement tool due to its emotionally charged nature. It also helps connect the issue to the present day world. “A narrative framework for historical trauma offers improved conceptual clarity and opportunity for scientific investigation into the relationship between trauma and present-day health by considering the ways in which historical traumas are represented in contemporary individual and community stories ”.

Affected groups

Traumatic events witnessed by an entire society can stir up collective sentiment, often resulting in a shift in that society's culture and mass actions.
Well known collective traumas include: slavery in the United States, the Trail of Tears, the Great Irish Famine, the Armenian genocide, the Nanjing Massacre, the Holocaust, attack on Pearl Harbor, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Partition of India and Pakistan, the Palestinian Nakba, the Halabja chemical attack, the MS Estonia in Sweden, the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic, and various others.
Collective traumas have been shown to play a key role in group identity formation. During World War II, a US submarine, the USS Puffer, came under several hours of depth charge attack by a Japanese surface vessel until the ship became convinced the submarine had somehow escaped. Psychological studies later showed that crewmen transferred to the submarine after the event were never accepted as part of the team. Later, US naval policy was changed so that after events of such psychological trauma, the crew would be dispersed to new assignments.
Rehabilitation of survivors becomes extremely difficult when an entire nation has experienced such severe traumas as war, genocide, torture, massacre, etc. Treatment of individuals is less effective when society itself is traumatized. Trauma remains chronic and can potentially reproduce itself as long as social causes are not addressed and perpetrators continue to enjoy impunity. Society as a whole may suffer from a form of chronic trauma. However, ways to heal collective trauma have recently been created.
During the Algerian War, Frantz Omar Fanon found his practice of treatment of native Algerians ineffective due to the continuation of the horror of a colonial war. He emphasized about the social origin of traumas, joined the liberation movement and urged oppressed people to purge themselves of their degrading traumas through their collective liberation struggle. He made the following remarks in his letter of resignation, as the Head of the Psychiatry Department at the Blida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria: Inculcation of horror and anxiety, through widespread torture, massacre, genocide and similar coercive measures has happened frequently in human history. There are plenty of examples in our modern history. Tyrants have always used their technique of "psychological artillery" in an attempt to cause havoc and confusion in the minds of people and hypnotize them with intimidation and cynicism. The result is a collective trauma that will pass through generations. Collective trauma can be alleviated through cohesive and collective efforts such as recognition, remembrance, solidarity, communal therapy and massive cooperation.
Multiple international scientific studies have shown how the emotional states of a mother has a direct impact on the developing nervous system of their child and the ensuing development of their brain systems over time.
A study conducted in the aftermath of the Six day war in Israel in 1967 for example, found that women who were pregnant during the wars occurrence were statistically more likely to have had children with schizophrenia. What happened at the collective level of the country, was directly reflected in the individual neurobiological systems of the infants in the womb. Due to the direct correlation/connection between the nervous system and every other organ in our bodies, collective trauma is also evident at the cellular level. Trauma can thus not be understood in purely individual terms.
Collective trauma does not merely reflect a historical fact or the recollection of a traumatic event that happened to a group of people. Collective trauma suggests that the tragedy is represented in the collective memory of the group, and like all forms of memory it comprises not only a reproduction of the events, but also an ongoing reconstruction of the trauma in an attempt to make sense of it. Collective memory of a trauma is different from individual memory because collective memory persists beyond the lives of the direct survivors of the events, and is remembered by group members that may be far removed from the traumatic events in time and space.