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