Abstract
This chapter looks at how people deal with the psychological wounds and symptoms from the political violence. The study found that people have outlived their beliefs, their relationship with themselves, with their ideals and with their memory. By overwhelming their capacity to resist the political violence has opened the door to the internal world of the victim and installed itself in their minds. In this way the abuse that was performed externally has been transformed into an internal abuse and come to acquire dominion over the entire person. These are circumstances in which anyone overwhelmed by brute force has to confront and somehow find an appropriate outlet if these experiences are to be emotionally worked through. However, people are disinclined to take responsibility for the psychological damage inflicted on them because feelings of impotence and helplessness overwhelm their motivation to act in relation to a past injustice.
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Notes
- 1.
Seeburger, F., (2012: 18) .
- 2.
Gautier, A., & Sabatini Scalmati, A., (2010: xix) .
- 3.
Gautier, A., & Sabatini Scalmati, A., (2010: xix).
- 4.
Gautier, A., & Sabatini Scalmati, A., (2010: xxiii)
- 5.
Gautier, A., & Sabatini Scalmati, A., (2010: xxiii)
- 6.
Laub, D., & Auerhahn, N, (1993: 293) .
- 7.
Volf, M. (2006: 26) .
- 8.
Saona, M., (2014) .
- 9.
Though the organization’s numbers have considerably reduced, a militant faction of Shining Path called Proseguir (Onward) continues to be active. It is believed that the faction consists of three groups known as the North, or Pangoa, the Centre, or Pucuta, and the South, or Vizcatán. The government claims that Proseguir is operating in alliance with drug traffickers. United States Department of State (2005) Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Peru: (2005)
- 10.
Though people from rural highland communities would not normally experience suffering in the same ways and with the same symptomatic outcomes as people from Western cultures the events of the political violence are such that the decision to close down their feelings as a natural defence against the experience of death and destruction is consistent with a universal response to extreme events and not one that is exclusive to the culture of the rural Andes.
- 11.
Janoff-Bulman, R., (1992: 98).
- 12.
- 13.
Watkins, M. & Shulman, H. (2008: 85) .
- 14.
- 15.
Krystal, H., (1995) in C. Caruth (ed.) (pp. 76–99) .
- 16.
Watkins, M. & Shulman, H. (2008: 106).
- 17.
Volf, M. (2006: 145) .
- 18.
Janoff-Bulman, R., (1992: 103).
- 19.
Martin-Baro, I., (1989: 3–20) .
- 20.
Schwab, G., (2010: 20) .
- 21.
Martin-Baro, I., (1986).
- 22.
Amery, J., (1980: 62ff) .
- 23.
See for example, Jnl. of Community Psychology Special Issue: The Assessment of Power Through Psycho Political Validity March 2008 Volume 36, Issue 2.
- 24.
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
Felman, S. & Laub, D. (1992: 68) .
- 28.
Other support has come from an NGO working with widows from the conflict , but the coverage is limited. In Qocha a mental health project funded by an international NGO was halted only weeks after starting because the project’s psychologists did not speak Quechua and lacked training in mental health issues associated with conflict-affected victims. According to one interviewee from Qocha the only government funded support for people with mental health problems is in the city and not the countryside.
- 29.
See for example, Jnl. of Community Psychology Special Issue: The Assessment of Power Through Psycho Political Validity March 2008 Volume 36, Issue 2
- 30.
Psychic splitting tends to be used to suggest “…a sequestering off of a portion of the self so that the split off element ceases to respond to the environment or else is in some way at odds with the remainder of the self.” See Lifton, R. J., (1986: 419) .
- 31.
Frankel, F. H. (1994) .
- 32.
Metz, J. B., (1980: 171) .
- 33.
Marcos, (2001: 209).
- 34.
- 35.
Metz, J. B. (1980: 109).
- 36.
Metz, J. B., (1980: 200).
- 37.
In addition to the shocking events the interviewees said that they associated the political violence with the times when they had nothing to eat, no one to turn to for help, nowhere safe to flee to, of feelings of despair, suicide, fear – particularly amongst those who had been hunted down to be killed. The interviewees also said that they continue to feel traumatized and that this is responsible for outbursts of tears – sometimes lasting all night, the feeling of being physically broken (particularly amongst those who had been tortured), an inability to eat, indifference to everything around them, confusion (by those who had been abused by both sides in the conflict) , feelings of guilt, an inability to concentrate, feelings of grief for those they had lost in the conflict, inability to study at school “…because the only things I could think about were those things.” For the interviewees who were children at the time these feelings have not dissipated; on the contrary, the memories have not faded and they still feel traumatized.
- 38.
Volf, M. (2006: 22)
- 39.
- 40.
Felman, S., & Laub, D., (1992: 67) .
- 41.
Ehlers, A., Hackmann, A., Steil, R., Clohessy, S., Wenninger, K., Winter, H. (2002) .
- 42.
Herman, J. (1992: 155).
- 43.
“…For Freud anxiety had the quality of indefiniteness and absence or indeterminacy of an object; for Kierkegaard and Heidegger, it was the fear of something that is nothing.” LaCapra, D., (2001: 57) .
- 44.
Volf, M. (2006: 27) .
- 45.
This was originally conceived to describe a particular type of reaction to unpleasant and painful experiences by the individual. Its purpose is to block out the feelings associated with suffering by the individual anaesthetizing themselves from the full effects of the feelings with which the suffering is associated. The numbed individual produces a feeling of detachment from other people with the result that they no longer perceive themselves as moral/thinking beings. Individualist psychic numbing is widely used to describe victims of rape and people who suffer from post trauma stress disorder (PTSD). See Lifton, R. J. (1982) .
- 46.
Gautier, A., & Sabatini Scalmati, A., (2010: 11) .
- 47.
Watkins, M. & Shulman, H. (2008: 58) .
- 48.
Watkins, M. & Shulman, H. (2008: 84).
- 49.
Watkins, M. & Shulman, H. (2008: 84).
- 50.
- 51.
Langer, L., (1993: 26).
- 52.
Gautier, A., & Sabatini Scalmati, A., (2010: 35).
- 53.
Sabatini Scalmati, A., (2000: 175).
- 54.
Felman, S. & Laub, D., (1992: 82). .
- 55.
- 56.
Goldie, P., (2011: 193) .
- 57.
Watkins, M. & Shulman, H. (2008: 54) .
- 58.
- 59.
- 60.
- 61.
- 62.
“…The state’s frozen objectivity means that reality has been manipulated by the state before a manipulation of the subject by reality took place.” Haas, P., (1988: 78) Morality after Auschwitz, Augsburg Fortress Publishing; Kleinman, A., & Kleinman, J., (1997a, b); Kleinman, A., Das, V., & Lock, M. (eds), (1997); Staub, E., (1996a, b).
- 63.
For Tilly “…trust between the citizen and the state is confined to those situations in which the citizen is certain to achieve personal benefit.” Tilly (1985:170) .
- 64.
- 65.
Correa, C., (2013: 1) .
- 66.
Correa, C., (2013: 1).
- 67.
- 68.
- 69.
During the political violence some subversives had been killed by the ronda and others disappeared.
- 70.
Gautier, A., & Sabatini Scalmati, A., (2010: 117) .
- 71.
Lira, E., (2001) .
- 72.
Krznaric, R., (2014: 15) .
- 73.
Staub, E., (1989: 45) .
- 74.
Pawelczynska, A., (1979: 126) .
- 75.
- 76.
For Bracken P. J. & Petty C. “Modern warfare is concerned not only to destroy life , but also ways of life. It targets social and cultural institutions and deliberately aims to undermine the means whereby people endure and recover from the suffering of war.” In: Bracken, P. J., & Petty, C. (eds.) (1998:3) .
- 77.
- 78.
Watkins, M. & Shulman, H. (2008: 69) .
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Bowyer, T.J. (2019). Psychic Wounds of Political Violence. In: Beyond Suffering and Reparation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98983-9_5
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