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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.<ref name="Janoff-Bulman" /> Similarly, national trauma overturns fundamental assumptions of social identity – something terrible has happened and social life has lost its predictability.<ref name="Neal2005" /> 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<ref name="Kiernan">{{cite news|last1=Kiernan|first1=David|title=Why Americans still can’t move past Vietnam|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/10/10/why-americans-still-cant-move-past-vietnam/|accessdate=1 December 2017|work=Washington Post|date=10 October 2017}}</ref> [[Winston Churchill]] famously titled the closing volume of his history of the [[The Second World War (book series)|Second World War]] ''Triumph and Tragedy''.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Churchill|first1=Winston|last2=Keegan|first2=John|title=Triumph and Tragedy: The Second World War, Volume 6|date=1954|publisher=Cassell|location=London|isbn=0304929735|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VArC_rYqimoC|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> 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<ref>{{cite web|last1=Koziol|first1=Carol A.|title=Individual and Collective Trauma: The Fort McMurray Fire|url=http://www.academia.edu/30682848/Individual_and_Collective_Trauma_The_Fort_McMurray_Fire|website=Academia.edu|publisher=Academia|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> yet the much larger [[Peshtigo Fire]] responsible for thousands of deaths is largely forgotten.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Hipke|first1=Deana C.|title=The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871|url=http://www.peshtigofire.info/|website=The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> |
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.<ref name="Janoff-Bulman" /> Similarly, national trauma overturns fundamental assumptions of social identity – something terrible has happened and social life has lost its predictability.<ref name="Neal2005" /> 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<ref name="Kiernan">{{cite news|last1=Kiernan|first1=David|title=Why Americans still can’t move past Vietnam|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/10/10/why-americans-still-cant-move-past-vietnam/|accessdate=1 December 2017|work=Washington Post|date=10 October 2017}}</ref> [[Winston Churchill]] famously titled the closing volume of his history of the [[The Second World War (book series)|Second World War]] ''Triumph and Tragedy''.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Churchill|first1=Winston|last2=Keegan|first2=John|title=Triumph and Tragedy: The Second World War, Volume 6|date=1954|publisher=Cassell|location=London|isbn=0304929735|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VArC_rYqimoC|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> 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<ref>{{cite web|last1=Koziol|first1=Carol A.|title=Individual and Collective Trauma: The Fort McMurray Fire|url=http://www.academia.edu/30682848/Individual_and_Collective_Trauma_The_Fort_McMurray_Fire|website=Academia.edu|publisher=Academia|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> yet the much larger [[Peshtigo Fire]] responsible for thousands of deaths is largely forgotten.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Hipke|first1=Deana C.|title=The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871|url=http://www.peshtigofire.info/|website=The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> |
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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.<ref name="Schivelbusch">{{cite book|last1=Schivelbusch|first1=Wolfgang|title=The culture of defeat : on national trauma, mourning, and recovery|date=2004|publisher=Picador|location=New York|isbn=0312423195|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VcUTAAAAQBAJ|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> The former peoples of the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate South]] in the [[American Civil War]] and the [[German Empire]] in [[World War I]] both created post-war mythologies (the [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Lost Cause]] in the former and the [[Stab-in-the-back myth|Stab-in-the-back Myth]] in the latter) of "glorious" defeat in unfair fights.<ref name="Schivelbusch" /> The post-war experience of Germany after World War Two, however, is much more complex and provoked reactions from a sense of national guilt<ref name="Davis">{{cite news|last1=Davis|first1=Mark|title=How World War II shaped modern Germany|url=http://www.euronews.com/2015/05/05/how-world-war-ii-shaped-modern-germany|accessdate=1 December 2017|work=euronews|date=5 May 2015}}</ref> to collective ignorance.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Bowie|first1=Laura|title=The Impact of World War Two on the Individual and Collective Memory of Germany and its Citizens|url=https://www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/pgfnewcastle/files/2015/05/Bowie-The-Impact-of-World-War-Two.pdf|publisher=Newcastle University|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> A common national response to these traumas is repeated calls for national unity and moral purification, as in the post-9/11 United States<ref name="Janoff-Bulman&Sheikh">{{cite journal|last1=Janoff-Bulman|first1=Ronnie|last2=Sana|first2=Sheikh|title=From national trauma to moralizing nation." Basic and Applied Social Psychology|journal=Basic and Applied Social Psychology|date=1 December 2006|volume=28|issue=4|pages=325–332|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> or post-war Japan.<ref name="Hashimoto">{{cite book|last1=Hashimoto|first1=Akiko|title=The long defeat : cultural trauma, memory, and identity in Japan|date=2015|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=9780190239152|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SXMRDAAAQBAJ|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> |
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.<ref name="Schivelbusch">{{cite book|last1=Schivelbusch|first1=Wolfgang|title=The culture of defeat : on national trauma, mourning, and recovery|date=2004|publisher=Picador|location=New York|isbn=0312423195|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VcUTAAAAQBAJ|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> The former peoples of the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate South]] in the [[American Civil War]] and the [[German Empire]] in [[World War I]] both created post-war mythologies (the [[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Lost Cause]] in the former and the [[Stab-in-the-back myth|Stab-in-the-back Myth]] in the latter) of "glorious" defeat in unfair fights.<ref name="Schivelbusch" /> The post-war experience of Germany after World War Two, however, is much more complex and provoked reactions from a sense of national guilt<ref name="Davis">{{cite news|last1=Davis|first1=Mark|title=How World War II shaped modern Germany|url=http://www.euronews.com/2015/05/05/how-world-war-ii-shaped-modern-germany|accessdate=1 December 2017|work=euronews|date=5 May 2015}}</ref> to collective ignorance.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Bowie|first1=Laura|title=The Impact of World War Two on the Individual and Collective Memory of Germany and its Citizens|url=https://www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/pgfnewcastle/files/2015/05/Bowie-The-Impact-of-World-War-Two.pdf|publisher=Newcastle University|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> A common national response to these traumas is repeated calls for national unity and moral purification, as in the post-9/11 United States<ref name="Janoff-Bulman&Sheikh">{{cite journal|last1=Janoff-Bulman|first1=Ronnie|last2=Sana|first2=Sheikh|title=From national trauma to moralizing nation." Basic and Applied Social Psychology|journal=Basic and Applied Social Psychology|date=1 December 2006|volume=28|issue=4|pages=325–332|accessdate=1 December 2017|doi=10.1207/s15324834basp2804_5}}</ref> or post-war Japan.<ref name="Hashimoto">{{cite book|last1=Hashimoto|first1=Akiko|title=The long defeat : cultural trauma, memory, and identity in Japan|date=2015|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=9780190239152|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SXMRDAAAQBAJ|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> |
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==Examples of national traumas== |
==Examples of national traumas== |
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*[[September 11 attacks]] in the United States of America<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Silver|first1=Roxane Cohen|title=Exploring the myths of coping with a national trauma: A longitudinal study of responses to the September 11th terrorist attacks.|journal=Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma|date=2005|volume=9|issue=1–2|pages=129–141|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> |
*[[September 11 attacks]] in the United States of America<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Silver|first1=Roxane Cohen|title=Exploring the myths of coping with a national trauma: A longitudinal study of responses to the September 11th terrorist attacks.|journal=Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma|date=2005|volume=9|issue=1–2|pages=129–141|accessdate=1 December 2017}}</ref> |
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*[[Srebrenica massacre]] in Bosnia and the Netherlands<ref name="vandeBilt">{{cite journal|url=http://www.bradford.ac.uk/social-sciences/peace-conflict-and-development/issue-21/Srebrenica---a-dutch-national-trauma.pdf#page=27|last=van de Bildt|first=Joyce|title=Srebrenica: A Dutch national trauma|work=Journal of Peace, Conflict & Development|issue=21|date=March 2015|issn=1742-0601|accessdate=30 December 2017}}</ref> |
*[[Srebrenica massacre]] in Bosnia and the Netherlands<ref name="vandeBilt">{{cite journal|url=http://www.bradford.ac.uk/social-sciences/peace-conflict-and-development/issue-21/Srebrenica---a-dutch-national-trauma.pdf#page=27|last=van de Bildt|first=Joyce|title=Srebrenica: A Dutch national trauma|work=Journal of Peace, Conflict & Development|issue=21|date=March 2015|issn=1742-0601|accessdate=30 December 2017}}</ref> |
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*[[Spanish–American War]] in Spain<ref>{{cite book|last1=Home|first1=John|editor1-last=Mcleod|editor1-first=Jenny|title=Defeat and Memory Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modern Era|date=2008|publisher=Palgrave MacMillan|location=New York|isbn=978-0-230-58279-8|chapter=Defeat and Memory in Modern History}}</ref> |
*[[Spanish–American War]] in Spain<ref>{{cite book|last1=Home|first1=John|editor1-last=Mcleod|editor1-first=Jenny|title=Defeat and Memory Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modern Era|date=2008|publisher=Palgrave MacMillan|location=New York|isbn=978-0-230-58279-8|chapter=Defeat and Memory in Modern History|doi=10.1057/9780230582798_2}}</ref> |
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*[[Vietnam War]] in the United States of America<ref name="Neal2005" /><ref name="Kiernan" /> |
*[[Vietnam War]] in the United States of America<ref name="Neal2005" /><ref name="Kiernan" /> |
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*[[Watergate scandal]] in the United States of America<ref name="Neal2005" /><ref name="Elovitz" /> |
*[[Watergate scandal]] in the United States of America<ref name="Neal2005" /><ref name="Elovitz" /> |
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Revision as of 02:45, 21 January 2018
National trauma is a concept in psychology and social psychology. A national trauma is one in which the affects 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]
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 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 of national traumas
- 1979 energy crisis in the United States of America[3]
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia[14] Sri Lanka, and Thailand[15]
- American Civil War in the American South[9]
- Anglo-Boer War in South Africa[16]
- Armenian Genocide in Armenia and the Armenian diaspora[17]
- Apartheid in South Africa[18]
- Assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States of America[2]
- Assassination of Olof Palme in Sweden[19]
- Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in Israel[20]
- Attack on Pearl Harbor in the United States of America[2]
- Battle of Adwa in Italy[21]
- Battle of Caporetto in Italy[22]
- Battle of Kosovo Polje in Serbia [23]
- Battle of the Boyne in Ireland[23]
- Battle of Mohács in Hungary[23]
- Battle of Alcácer Quibir in Portugal[23]
- Berlin Wall in Germany[14]
- Bosnian War in Bosnia[15]
- Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine and Belarus[14]
- Century of humiliation in China[24]
- Cuban Missile Crisis in the United States of America[2]
- Death of Diana, Princess of Wales in the United Kingdom[25]
- Dirty War in Argentina [14]
- Falklands War in Argentina[14]
- Franco-Prussian War in France[9]
- Great Depression in the United States of America[2]
- The Holocaust for European Jewish peoples[14][26]
- Iran hostage crisis in the United States of America[3]
- McCarthyism in the United States of America[2]
- Pinochet dictatorship in Chile[27]
- Rwandan genocide in Rwanda[28]
- September 11 attacks in the United States of America[29]
- Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia and the Netherlands[30]
- Spanish–American War in Spain[31]
- Vietnam War in the United States of America[2][5]
- Watergate scandal in the United States of America[2][3]
- World War I in Germany[9]
- World War II in Germany[10] and Japan[13]
References
- ^ a b Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie (1992). Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0029160154. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Neal, Arthur G. (2005). National Trauma and Collective Memory: Extraordinary Events in the American Experience. Armonk, NY: Sharpe. ISBN 0765615819. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ a b c d Elovitz, Paul H. (Summer 2008). "Presidential Responses to National Trauma: Case Studies of G.W. Bush, Carter, and Nixon". The Journal of Psychohistory. 36 (1): 36.
{{cite journal}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ^ "Definition of National Identity in English". Oxford Dictionaries. Archived from the original on 2015-11-17.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|deadurl=ignored (|url-status=suggested) (help) - ^ a b Kiernan, David (10 October 2017). "Why Americans still can't move past Vietnam". Washington Post. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ Churchill, Winston; Keegan, John (1954). Triumph and Tragedy: The Second World War, Volume 6. London: Cassell. ISBN 0304929735. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ Koziol, Carol A. "Individual and Collective Trauma: The Fort McMurray Fire". Academia.edu. Academia. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ Hipke, Deana C. "The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871". The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ a b c d e Schivelbusch, Wolfgang (2004). The culture of defeat : on national trauma, mourning, and recovery. New York: Picador. ISBN 0312423195. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ a b Davis, Mark (5 May 2015). "How World War II shaped modern Germany". euronews. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ Bowie, Laura. "The Impact of World War Two on the Individual and Collective Memory of Germany and its Citizens" (PDF). Newcastle University. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie; Sana, Sheikh (1 December 2006). "From national trauma to moralizing nation." Basic and Applied Social Psychology". Basic and Applied Social Psychology. 28 (4): 325–332. doi:10.1207/s15324834basp2804_5.
{{cite journal}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ^ a b Hashimoto, Akiko (2015). The long defeat : cultural trauma, memory, and identity in Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190239152. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ a b c d e f Kellerman, Peter Felix. Sociodrama and Collective Trauma. London, Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. ISBN 9781843104469. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ a b Shamai, Michal (2016). Systemic Interventions for Collective and National Trauma: Theory, Practice. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 9781315709154. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
- ^ Daly, Nicholas (2004). Literature, Technology, and Modernity, 1860–2000. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 60. ISBN 0521833922. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
- ^ Dabashi, Hamid (18 September 2014). "Turkish 'genocide' film: An epic too late?". Al Jazeera.
- ^ Abdullah, Somaya (January 2013). "Multicultural social work and national trauma: Lessons from South Africa". International Social Work. 58 (1): 43–54.
{{cite journal}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ^ Reeves, Richard (1 March 1987). "The Palme Obsession; The Murder Sweden Can't Forget – Or Solve". New York Times. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
- ^ Raviv, Amiram; Sadeh, Avi; Raviv, Alona; Silberstein, Ora; Diver, Oma (June 2000). "Young Israelis' Reactions to National Trauma: The Rabin Assassination and Terror Attacks". Political Psychology. 21 (2): 299–322. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
- ^ Levine, David (3 March 2009). "The Battle of Adwa as a "Historic" Event". Ethiopian Review. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
- ^ Wilcox, Vanda (2008). "From Heroic Defeat to Mutilated Victory: The Myth of Caporetto in Fascist Italy". In Mcleod, Jenny (ed.). Defeat and Memory Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modern Era. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 978-0-230-58279-8.
- ^ a b c d Pick, T.M. "The myth of the trauma/the trauma of the myth: Myths as mediators of some long-term effects of war trauma". Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. 7 (3): 201–226. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
- ^ Levine, Paul (May 2013). "Never Forget National Humiliation".
The Chinese master narrative of the century of humiliation defines the national trauma China uses to identify itself.
- ^ Lacey, Robert (2008). Monarch: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth II. Simon and Schuster. p. 384. ISBN 978-1-4391-0839-0.
- ^ De Haan, Ido (1998). "The construction of a national trauma the memory of the persecution of the Jews in The Netherlands". The Netherlands journal of social sciences. 34 (2): 196–217.
{{cite journal}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ^ Wirshing, Irene (2009). National trauma in postdictatorship Latin American literature : Chile and Argentina. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 9781433105555. Retrieved 1 December 2017.
- ^ Neugebauer, Richard; Fisher, Prudence; Turner, J. Blake; et al. (1 August 2009). "Post-traumatic stress reactions among Rwandan children and adolescents in the early aftermath of genocide". International Journal of Epidemiology. 38 (4): 1033–1045. doi:10.1093/ije/dyn375. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
{{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in:|last4=(help) - ^ Silver, Roxane Cohen (2005). "Exploring the myths of coping with a national trauma: A longitudinal study of responses to the September 11th terrorist attacks". Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma. 9 (1–2): 129–141.
{{cite journal}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ^ van de Bildt, Joyce (March 2015). "Srebrenica: A Dutch national trauma" (PDF). Journal of Peace, Conflict & Development (21). ISSN 1742-0601. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
- ^ Home, John (2008). "Defeat and Memory in Modern History". In Mcleod, Jenny (ed.). Defeat and Memory Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modern Era. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. doi:10.1057/9780230582798_2. ISBN 978-0-230-58279-8.