Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
usually already partially separated from their living environments (unlike
a more rural individual who might work and live within a closely-knit
family unit) these could be replicated in a new setting. Especially welladapted
were the students who could continue their studies, and the adults
who could find some sort of occupation and whose children were able to
continue their education. These people generally showed greater confidence
in themselves, had hope for the future, and thought more realistically
about the possibility of returning to Kosovo. On the other hand, the
older people coming from rural environments felt completely disoriented
and lost, as their individual identities had been rooted in a collective
psychological and social environment that was entirely bound to the cycles
of agricultural production and to the unity of farmhouse, patriarchal family
and land.
These differences, however, should not diminish the fact that all of the
interviewed people had experienced anxiety, pain and suffering related to
the disruption and loss of social and cultural identities that had been, until
then, intertwined with their geographic, material and cultural settings.
The ensuing fear of losing themselves and of painful loss re-emerged
every time memories of past routine activities collided with the present
situation. The subject’s former routine was often recalled vividly in the
present absence of a clear social function, role and space for the displaced
subject.
If we recall Anthony Giddens’ definition of ontological security as “the
confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their selfidentity
and in the surrounding social and material environments of
action” (Giddens, 1990: 92), the disrupted daily routines of the Serb IDPs
might be understood in their full social and psychological relevance, and
their consequent anxiety merely reflect this significance. According to
Giddens, “all individuals develop a framework of ontological security of
some sort, based on routines of various forms” (Giddens, 1991: 44). These
routines are vital in controlling the feeling of anxiety, which “concerns
(unconsciously) perceived threats to the integrity of the security system of
the individual” (Giddens, 1991: 45). If we follow Giddens’ argument about
the role of routines in sustaining a feeling of ontological security, we find,
at the root of the Serb IDPs psychological suffering, the destruction of a
common social and cultural framework, which once treated them as privileged
and entitled subjects. The displaced Serbs found themselves in an
environment where homes, physical places and situations were not matching
their imagined social positioning and failed to confirm the subject’s
configuration and organization of his libidinal economy. Bearing in mind
the hegemonic presence of a narcissist and collectivist mode of subjectivation
within the Serbian culture (discussed above), anxiety can therefore
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