Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 4 • Nicola Mai
dreams found them living in their destroyed homes, performing routine
activities. To most, the disruption of these daily routines was the origin of
their anxiety, sadness and irritability.
Almost every person I interviewed had experienced violence, antagonism,
repression, and discrimination. Moreover, each of the interviewees knew
at least one or more people who had been killed or who had experienced a
personal tragedy. While watching people retell their stories of pain and
sorrow and noticing their transformation under the pressure of the resurgent
pain, I was deeply shaken by their apparent sorrow, but even more so
by what was not spoken; the pain that lingered above us during the interviews.
The dynamics of repression and defence applied to that tremendous
intensity of sorrow and pain often meant that those who were directly
involved in a deeply sorrowful event did not mention it. The interviewers
were often told these stories from other members of the family. One
mother, for instance, forgot to discuss how her only son had been seriously
wounded and his life endangered. She spoke of this later, and only when
directly encouraged.
These mechanisms of suppression prevailed in those who had personally
encountered life-threatening situations, or who were closely related to
someone who had. These people were reluctant to speak of their deeply
unsettling personal experiences. In some cases, the stories appeared only
after considerable encouragement from the interviewer. On several occasions
their revival caused reactions too dangerous for the interviewees, and
much experienced effort was needed to settle the deeply disturbing emotions
evoked in the course of conversation.
In most cases, the most painful memory was that of the moment people
were forced to leave their homes. The experience of displacement and
resettlement was, in fact, very disturbing for the vast majority of those
interviewed, and the disruption of daily routines and of familiar, every day
life activities, proved to be an ordeal for everyone. Because daily routines
and social practices are essential to maintain a sense of ontological security,
they play a pivotal role in sustaining and maintaining the subject’s
psychological equilibrium. The more these routines are integral and rooted
in the subject’s understanding of the meaning of his own presence in the
world, the more deeply these routines have been disrupted, the more a person
will tend to feel disoriented and the more vulnerable and fragile his/her
psychological equilibrium will tend to be.
Urbanized people, whether young or adult, usually reacted to the context
of resettlement with more resilience, since the social and cultural environment
in which they used to live is not so different from that to which they
must adjust. Further, since their individual identities and family lives were
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