Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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<strong>Psychosocial</strong> <strong>Notebook</strong>, Volume 2, October 2001<br />
In the case of Kosovo, the recurrent pattern that Bruck so well described,<br />
writing that “The human community needs to be split into perpetrators or<br />
transgressors, objects or victims, and authorities and responsible” (Bruck,<br />
1992), was mixed, within every type of organized intervention, with the<br />
“humanitarian” aim of the different agencies and NGOs.<br />
The media exposure/transformation of wartime events that was so particular<br />
to the Kosovo crisis also allowed the journalists to meddle with the<br />
diverse versions of this basic conflict plot. The media’s tendency to break<br />
up the facts and then put them back together to produce a telling story,<br />
found its best description in the term “mythinformation”, 2 a word which<br />
evokes the means by which stories can be tied to objects, intentions and<br />
events in a strong blend that appears true and credible because it is familiar,<br />
and it is familiar because it includes the fundamental trilogy: predator/victim/rescuer.<br />
Our intervention did not arrive within a neutral situation,<br />
but rather in one where “mythinformation” had effectively fossilized<br />
the environment, interpreting it through the plot: aggressor/victim/rescuer<br />
mentioned above.<br />
The PTR project, through the Archives of Memory, tried to offer the different<br />
players involved in the Kosovo intervention a series of possible<br />
stimuli to help them break away from this rigid and limiting constellation.<br />
In this brief introduction, I would particularly like to concentrate on the<br />
possibility that one of the constellation’s components, the “Rescuer”,<br />
might break away from its rigid role. To be able to break away from this<br />
set function, he or she who plays the part must be aware that the “Rescuer”<br />
model can be hidden or masked under a multitude of figures. I have briefly<br />
attempted to describe these coverings, beginning with the guise pointed<br />
out by Enriquez, the figure of the “Trainer”. It is only by breaking away<br />
from his rigid role of “Rescuer”, that the humanitarian worker can offer<br />
other members of the constellation (such as the “Victim”) solutions that<br />
are not repetitive and fatal, insofar as they reproduce the same dynamics<br />
of violence that created the initial conflict. In other words, it is by breaking<br />
away from the set figures that the rescuer/trainer might help construct<br />
a future less exposed to the systematic repetition of violence.<br />
Every act of international cooperation, especially if it occurs in the context<br />
of humanitarian intervention in a transition situation immediately following<br />
a conflict, and even more so in the field of psychosocial support,<br />
implies both a series of explicit models, and “ghost motors” 3 that confer<br />
upon those who carry out this work its simultaneously passionate, worrisome<br />
and frustrating aspects. The work’s attraction probably resides in<br />
contemplating and sharing the desire of omnipotence with the fear of<br />
impotence, in being (at least in intention) a bearer of life, but also a<br />
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