Abuse, Trauma, and Torture - Their Consequences and Effects (8 page)

We react to serious mishaps, life altering
setbacks, disasters, abuse, and death by going through the phases
of grieving. Traumas are the complex outcomes of psychodynamic and
biochemical processes. But the particulars of traumas depend
heavily on the interaction between the victim and his social
milieu.

It would seem that while the victim progresses
from denial to helplessness, rage, depression and thence to
acceptance of the traumatizing events - society demonstrates a
diametrically opposed progression. This incompatibility, this
mismatch of psychological phases is what leads to the formation and
crystallization of trauma.

PHASE I

Victim phase I - DENIAL

The magnitude of such unfortunate events is
often so overwhelming, their nature so alien, and their message so
menacing - that denial sets in as a defence mechanism aimed at self
preservation. The victim denies that the event occurred, that he or
she is being abused, that a loved one passed away.

Society phase I - ACCEPTANCE,
MOVING ON

The victim's nearest ("Society") - his
colleagues, his employees, his clients, even his spouse, children,
and friends - rarely experience the events with the same shattering
intensity. They are likely to accept the bad news and move on. Even
at their most considerate and empathic, they are likely to lose
patience with the victim's state of mind. They tend to ignore the
victim, or chastise him, to mock, or to deride his feelings or
behaviour, to collude to repress the painful memories, or to
trivialize them.

Summary Phase I

The mismatch between the victim's reactive
patterns and emotional needs and society's matter-of-fact attitude
hinders growth and healing. The victim requires society's help in
avoiding a head-on confrontation with a reality he cannot digest.
Instead, society serves as a constant and mentally destabilizing
reminder of the root of the victim's unbearable agony (the Job
syndrome).

PHASE II

Victim phase II -
HELPLESSNESS

Denial gradually gives way to a sense of
all-pervasive and humiliating helplessness, often accompanied by
debilitating fatigue and mental disintegration. These are among the
classic symptoms of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). These
are the bitter results of the internalization and integration of
the harsh realization that there is nothing one can do to alter the
outcomes of a natural, or man-made, catastrophe. The horror in
confronting one's finiteness, meaninglessness, negligibility, and
powerlessness - is overpowering.

Society phase II -
DEPRESSION

The more the members of society come to grips
with the magnitude of the loss, or evil, or threat represented by
the grief inducing events - the sadder they become. Depression is
often little more than suppressed or self-directed anger. The
anger, in this case, is belatedly induced by an identified or
diffuse source of threat, or of evil, or loss. It is a higher level
variant of the "fight or flight" reaction, tampered by the rational
understanding that the "source" is often too abstract to tackle
directly.

Summary Phase II

Thus, when the victim is most in need,
terrified by his helplessness and adrift - society is immersed in
depression and unable to provide a holding and supporting
environment. Growth and healing is again retarded by social
interaction. The victim's innate sense of annulment is enhanced by
the self-addressed anger (=depression) of those around
him.

PHASE III

Both the victim and society react with RAGE to
their predicaments. In an effort to narcissistically reassert
himself, the victim develops a grandiose sense of anger directed at
paranoidally selected, unreal, diffuse, and abstract targets
(=frustration sources). By expressing aggression, the victim
re-acquires mastery of the world and of himself.

Members of society use rage to re-direct the
root cause of their depression (which is, as we said, self directed
anger) and to channel it safely. To ensure that this expressed
aggression alleviates their depression - real targets must are
selected and real punishments meted out. In this respect, "social
rage" differs from the victim's. The former is intended to
sublimate aggression and channel it in a socially acceptable manner
- the latter to reassert narcissistic self-love as an antidote to
an all-devouring sense of helplessness.

In other words, society, by itself being in a
state of rage, positively enforces the narcissistic rage reactions
of the grieving victim. This, in the long run, is
counter-productive, inhibits personal growth, and prevents healing.
It also erodes the reality test of the victim and encourages
self-delusions, paranoidal ideation, and ideas of
reference.

PHASE IV

Victim Phase IV -
DEPRESSION

As the consequences of narcissistic rage -
both social and personal - grow more unacceptable, depression sets
in. The victim internalizes his aggressive impulses. Self directed
rage is safer but is the cause of great sadness and even suicidal
ideation. The victim's depression is a way of conforming to social
norms. It is also instrumental in ridding the victim of the
unhealthy residues of narcissistic regression. It is when the
victim acknowledges the malignancy of his rage (and its anti-social
nature) that he adopts a depressive stance.

Society Phase IV -
HELPLESSNESS

People around the victim ("society") also
emerge from their phase of rage transformed. As they realize the
futility of their rage, they feel more and more helpless and devoid
of options. They grasp their limitations and the irrelevance of
their good intentions. They accept the inevitability of loss and
evil and Kafkaesquely agree to live under an ominous cloud of
arbitrary judgement, meted out by impersonal powers.

Summary Phase IV

Again, the members of society are unable to
help the victim to emerge from a self-destructive phase. His
depression is enhanced by their apparent helplessness. Their
introversion and inefficacy induce in the victim a feeling of
nightmarish isolation and alienation. Healing and growth are once
again retarded or even inhibited.

PHASE V

Victim Phase V - ACCEPTANCE AND
MOVING ON

Depression - if pathologically protracted and
in conjunction with other mental health problems - sometimes leads
to suicide. But more often, it allows the victim to process
mentally hurtful and potentially harmful material and paves the way
to acceptance. Depression is a laboratory of the psyche. Withdrawal
from social pressures enables the direct transformation of anger
into other emotions, some of them otherwise socially unacceptable.
The honest encounter between the victim and his own (possible)
death often becomes a cathartic and self-empowering inner dynamic.
The victim emerges ready to move on.

Society Phase V -
DENIAL

Society, on the other hand, having exhausted
its reactive arsenal - resorts to denial. As memories fade and as
the victim recovers and abandons his obsessive-compulsive dwelling
on his pain - society feels morally justified to forget and
forgive. This mood of historical revisionism, of moral leniency, of
effusive forgiveness, of re-interpretation, and of a refusal to
remember in detail - leads to a repression and denial of the
painful events by society.

Summary Phase V

This final mismatch between the victim's
emotional needs and society's reactions is less damaging to the
victim. He is now more resilient, stronger, more flexible, and more
willing to forgive and forget. Society's denial is really a denial
of the victim. But, having ridden himself of more primitive
narcissistic defences - the victim can do without society's
acceptance, approval, or look. Having endured the purgatory of
grieving, he has now re-acquired his self, independent of society's
acknowledgement.

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