Trauma

Life Stories of Survivors

Selma Leydesdorff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351301183
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Traumatic experiences and their consequences are often the core of life stories told by survivors of violence. In Trauma: Life Stories of Survivors leading academics explore the relationship between the experiences of terror and helplessness that have caused trauma, the ways in which survivors remember, and the representation of these memories in the language and form of their life stories.International case studies include the migration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, the life stories of Guatemalan war widows, violence in South Africa, persecution of political prisoners in South Africa and the former Czechoslovakia, lynching in the Mississippi Delta, resistance in Zimbabwe's liberation war, sexual abuse, and the ongoing Irish troubles. The volume reveals the complexity of remembering and forgetting traumatic experiences, and shows that survivors are likely to express themselves in stories containing elements that are imaginary, fragmented, and loaded with symbolism. Trauma: Life Stories of Survivors is a groundbreaking work of relevance across the social sciences. This new perspective on trauma will be of particular importance to researchers in psychology, history, women's studies, anthropology, sociology and cultural studies.

Part 1 Case Studies

Trauma

Life Stories of Survivors

Kim Lacy Rogers, Selma Leydesdorff and Graham Dawson

1 Trauma Signals in Life Stories

Gadi BenEzer

The concept of trauma does not have a straightforward definition. It is used by psychologists, psychoanalysts and researchers in a variety of meanings (Sandier et al. 1991; Dawes 1992; Fürst 1967). I shall not attempt here to add theoretically to the concept or even to discuss in full its lack of clarity. For the purpose of this article suffice it to say that psychoanalysts and psychologists use the term to denote two main meanings: first, an event which happened in the external world, together with the way it was subjectively experienced. The external and internal reality are put together through the common reference to a ‘traumatic state’ or ‘situation’ which is their nexus. The second main meaning refers to some pathological consequences which are interpreted - through extrapolation backwards in time — as having been initiated by the trauma. These dimensions of meaning (Sandier and Sandier 1983; Sandier et al. 1991) can also be found in the literature on refugee trauma as, for example, in Millica’s Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, HTQ (Mollica et al. 1992) and in many others. In this paper I shall mainly use the term trauma referring to the first meaning mentioned above.

Life stories seem to be particularly suitable for gaining an understanding of the significance of trauma in people’s lives. Traumatic events create a mul-tifaceted complex of reactions, which may even be contradictory at times. The life story method enables these contradictions and complexities to be legitimately included within the various parts of the story (while questionnaires and even question and answer modes force the person to ‘choose’ and to ‘decide’ between optional reactions).

Trauma is a very intimate experience; its meaning very personal. A life story technique with its non-interfering focus (in narrative interviews in particular (Rosenthal 1991)), enables the person to share his/her most intimate experiences which involve, in many cases, feelings of shame, guilt, and the like, which are not otherwise easy to express.¹ It also enables the person to reconstruct the meaning of the traumatic experiences to him or herself, as well as to the interviewer. In many cases, traumatic events change their meaning during the course of a person’s life. Life stories, as Gelia Frank has suggested (Frank and Vanderburgh 1986), are not only a list of events but include evaluations of the experience. Thus, life stories can reveal these changes in the meaning of trauma at various stages of a person’s life.

It is apparent, too, that traumatic events never happen in a social vacuum. They are connected to the social context in which they take place. In many if not most cases, they are related to the norms of society and to what is spoken about and what is kept silent in public. Life stories include an exposition of the relation between the private and the collective context. They can thus give a better understanding of both the personal trauma, as it is viewed within a social context, and of the social milieu, as reflected in the individual’s life.

Only a few researchers have studied trauma using life story (or narrative) interviews (Heizner 1994). Labov analysed difficult experiences within stories of black youth in New York as part of his evaluation theory. Dan Bar-On (1994) and Dwork (1991) have researched the life stories of Holocaust survivors. Rosenthal (1991) and Bar-On (1989) have studied the psychological legacy of the Holocaust for the German people of various generations through their life stories. Lomsky-Feder (1995) has looked at the effects of war on the life stories of young Israeli men; Leiblich (1994) has studied the life stories of those who went through the traumatic experience of captivity, and Agger ( 1994) has studied narratives of refugee women who were subjected to sexual and other torture.

These different studies centred on the context and thematic organization of the text rather than on the linguistic-narrative behaviour of the interviewees.

Some researchers have studied the rhetoric of trauma. Osgood (I960), for example, researched written texts. He studied suicide letters and looked at the general influence of mental stress on linguistic abilities; and more recently, Heizner (1994) looked at the rhetoric of trauma in both oral and written texts, in personal narratives as well as in the literary reconstructions of traumatic experiences.

This paper tries to add to this developing scientific literature by charting possible verbal and non-verbal trauma signals within the life story. It considers the various ways in which trauma is expressed within the form of personal narrative, both verbally and in non-verbal communications. I suggest that traumatic experiences, even if the person has come to terms with them, are narrated in a unique way within narratives, and that these ways could be ‘charted’ and detected within the stories. This paper is based on narratives of the journey of young Ethiopian Jews migrating on foot to Israel. It is part of a larger study on the subject (BenEzer 1992, 1995), which I shall describe briefly below.

The study of the journey stories

During the period 1977-85, some 20,000 Ethiopian Jews left their homes in Ethiopia and - motivated by an ancient dream of returning to the land of their ancestors, to ‘Yerussalem’ - embarked on a secret and highly traumatic exodus to Israel. Due to various political circumstances, they had to leave their homes in haste, and go a long way on foot through unknown country towards the Sudan. They stayed for a period of one to two years in refugee camps there until they were brought to Israel. Conditions on the journey were extremely difficult, including incarcerations, attacks by bandits, walking at night over mountains, illness and death. A fifth of this group of migrant-refugees, 4,000 people, did not survive the journey. Each and every family suffered some loss of life. They also faced problems connected with their Jewish identity and the fact that they were heading for Israel. The trauma was thus perceived as collective as well as personal.

The study I conducted focused on the experience of this journey, its meaning for the people who made it and its relation to the initial encounter with Israeli society. It aimed to fill a gap in the existing literature in relation to migration journeys and refugee studies. It argued that powerful processes occur on such journeys which affect the individual and the community in life-changing ways, including the initial encounter with, and adaptation to, the new society.

Forty five young people were interviewed in the tradition of the narrative interview and their personal stories of the journey were then analysed. Three main themes expressed the major dimensions of meaning through which Ethiopian Jews constructed their experiences along the journey: the theme of Jewish identity, the theme of suffering and that of bravery and inner strength. The kinds of experience relating to these themes were presented and discussed in full in the study. The psycho-social impact of the journey on the individual and on the community was also analysed, focusing mainly on the relationship between coping and meaning, on trauma and on personal development and growth.

The three major themes derived from the journey, which also constitute dimensions of self-concept, correspond to the three main aspects and myths prevalent in Israeli society during the 1980s. However, Israeli society failed to acknowledge Ethiopian Jews’ self-perception, thus causing considerable difficulties in their adaptation. The study concludes by showing how Ethiopian Jews use the story of their journey in order to assert their own self-concept and identity and to find their place within Israeli society. It is also suggested that the story of the journey is in the process of itself turning into a myth.

Trauma and trauma signals

This paper takes up a subsidiary issue of the study: the ways in which traumatic experiences are expressed in the narratives.

Ethiopian Jewish adolescents experienced on their journey one or more painful experiences that constituted traumatic events for them.² For some adolescents, the whole experience of the journey was coloured by their trauma-tization and was accordingly perceived mainly as a traumatic experience.

Trauma was brought about by a range of situations. These included situations in which their lives were in danger; when they suffered the loss of a parent, relative or close friend; went through separation or disintegration of the family; experienced a total inability to walk any further; were subjected to hunger, thirst, or what seemed to be fatal disease; suffered persecution and torture and were subjected to violation of body boundaries; underwent painful events connected to their Jewish identity; or witnessed any or all of these in others, whether as a single incident or repeatedly.

I should add here that many of the events of this particular migration journey would have traumatized anyone who had experienced them. Traumatization, however, is related to, and imbued with, the meaning of the event for the individual (Klein 1976, Garbarino 1992). The meaning given to any of a series of events is related, among other factors, to one’s life history and personal biases, priorities and sensitivities.

Let me emphasize, however, two aspects of the journey that had an impact on the whole community. They were both sources of trauma and also raised the overall level (baseline) of pain, thus lowering the threshold for traumatization. I refer, first, to the separation from parents and, second, to the shock following the realization that they would have to stay in the Sudan for a long period. I shall elaborate below.

Many Ethiopian adolescents set out on their journey without their parents. Some had been sent by their parents in order to ensure that at least the adolescents’ migration might be secured, if at all possible; others were sent ahead of the family in order to check whether there was really a passage to Israel via the Sudan; and many ran away with their peers, without their parents’ consent.

Separation affected the adolescents because, first of all, it forced them to experience the journey without the particular and almost irreplaceable support that the proximity of parents normally gives to children.² As well as protecting them against real dangers, parents supply children and adolescents with a feeling of safety which affects the way that they deal with events and whether they experience them as traumatizing. Moreover, by their verbal and non-verbal responses parents also interpret the environment for their children, supplying children with the meaning of occurrences, and thus of their traumatic or non-traumatic significance.³

In the Ethiopian context, where decision making is maintained by familial authority, parents and family serve as an even stronger protective and supportive layer for the individual child. Adolescents had thus been less accustomed to handling their multi-generational social world and to making important decisions by themselves. Moreover they were also accustomed to being more ‘emotionally refuelled’ within the intensive relations of the Ethiopian family so that an individual would often feel incomplete when separated from his or her parents for a long time.⁴ Separation, therefore, left these adolescents particularly vulnerable, and made them more prone to traumatization.

The shock of arriving in the Sudan, and discovering that it was not Jerusalem, was a second factor that affected their vulnerability to trauma. The wayfarers had been convinced that once they arrived in the Sudan they would immediately be transferred to Israel. Their ‘part’ was to arrive in the Sudan; the Israeli government’s ‘part’ was to get them to Israel straight away. The thought ofthat, the inner conviction that their mission was only to complete the tough walking section of the journey, helped them to cope with the difficult and demanding trail. In their stories they report that although they had known that the Sudan was not Israel, they kept concentrating their minds on arriving in the Sudan, feeling and thinking that it was actually the end of their journey, the arrival in the promised land. Some even tell of people throwing away extra clothes at the border because they felt they had arrived in Israel, or were just about to do so. One youngster recounts how, upon arriving in the Sudan, he had sent a letter back to his parents in Ethiopia telling them that he had indeed arrived in Jerusalem.

Thus, realizing that they would have to stay for a very long time in the Sudan came as a complete shock to them. It turned the immediate gratification of getting to Israel, which they had anticipated during their journey, into a deep and painful disappointment. It demoralized them. Instead of finally being able to settle down peacefully, they had to call once again on their inner resources in order to deal with conditions in the Sudan. In order to cope with the harsh refugee existence, they had to reorientate themselves and to review their ideas of their immediate future. They were also faced with self-doubt and questions about the wisdom of their initial decision to set out. The shock of crossing into the Sudan and realizing that it was not the end of their journey put the sacrifices they had already made into a new light and resulted in many personal crises.

The impact of separation from parents and the shock of arriving and staying in the Sudan thus lowered the overall resistance of the adolescents to those potentially traumatizing events which had occurred on the journey and in the Sudan.

Before discussing the specific trauma signals, it is important to note one additional methodological aspect of this study: I refer to the adaptations in interviewing techniques which took into account the cross-cultural context. These adaptations were partly developed through many years of work as a clinical psychologist/psychotherapist with Ethiopian Jews, as well as specifically for this research. They were intended to overcome the problem of trust in the inter-cultural situation, and the misunderstandings that could arise from the different cultural communication codes of interviewee and interviewer (BenEzer 1987, 1995). In particular, techniques were invented to circumvent the Ethiopian cultural dictum of reserve and containment concerning painful experiences, suffering and trauma, so they could be included in the stories. These adaptations, however, are not elaborated here.

Trauma signals

How then are traumatic experiences detected in the life stories? Are there specific signals of trauma within narratives?

I would like to suggest that when an interviewee is recounting a traumatic experience - even if it is an experience with which he/she has come to terms - it will still produce particular forms of expression within the narrative. In other words, traumata are related differently from the rest of the story. These signals of traumata within the narration are listed below. They are not proposed as diagnostic criteria of trauma in the clinical sense but as a way...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Introduction: Trauma and life stories
• Part 1 Case Studies
• Part 2 Debates and Reviews
• Index