Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
The principal aim of this section was to identify the specific narratives
through which Serb IDPs from Kosovo approached and dealt with the pain
and suffering emerging from the memories of hardship, antagonism, war
and displacement. The narrative extracts show how, in Yugoslavia, (as in
most communist countries where psychology was introduced as a medical
discipline at a very early stage), pathological and psychiatric vocabulary,
and in particular words such as “trauma” and “stress”, have floated into
common use. Of particular interest are the word “trauma” and the related
discourses of traumatization. These can be assimilated into the discourses
of self-victimization, as an attempt to achieve moral legitimization and
support from an external observer. Among the interviewees, many reported
having sought medical advice from a psychiatrist and having been prescribed
the use of tranquillisers. Nobody, however, admitted to resorting
(or to having resorted) to traditional medicine.
Aside from trauma, the other psychiatric terms most commonly used by
the interviewees were “anxiety”, “depression”, “nervous breakdown”, and
even “post traumatic stress disorder”, though it occurred only once, when
a former army officer was discussing the presence and impact of the volunteers
working alongside regular troops. Non-technical terms used to
describe their conditions were: “suffering”, “pain”, “sadness”, “irritability”,
“lack of desire to enjoy life”, “self-isolation”, “absent-mindedness”,
“fear of being lost”, “feeling of helplessness”, and “depression”. When
asked how they would describe their sorrow in another way, two people
mentioned “a scar in the soul”. Another described what she felt as “a deep
wound in her soul”. Older people and parents felt burdened by the need to
hide their pain in the presence of their children, who were already losing
sleep and appetite.
All of the interviewees spoke of having experienced some form of physical
or psychological condition that they associated with the memory of
recent hardship: sleep or eating disorders, anxiety, tremors, depression,
irritability. Many people explained their physical suffering in relation to
their psychological suffering. Pathologies like thyroidism, ulcers, stomach
aches, high blood pressure and heart conditions were somehow seen as
related to some form of psychological condition. On the other hand, many
reported cases of relatives and friends, both young and old, who died when
their already critical health conditions were dramatically worsened by the
circumstances of war and displacement. In all of the cases, suffering was
related both to the memories and to the experiences of antagonism, displacement
and resettlement. Particularly painful to them were the memories
recalling life before the war. Nearly all of the interviewees dreamt
regularly of life in Kosovo before destruction and conflict. Usually these
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