The second way a collective trauma is recognized is through the loss of shared understandings. The people of Buffalo Creek, though unaware, understood what was expected of them since they were a part of the community of Buffalo Creek. They shared ideas and these ideas helped to shape the personalities of the people from Buffalo Creek. When the flood occurred, these people lost their shared understandings, which greatly affected their personalities and caused them to become fearful. The devastation of losing their community and its understandings revealed another way in which collective trauma can be identified. The people of Buffalo Creek shared the same ideas as a collective group, so when the disaster occurred, they experienced a collective
A storm such as Katrina undoubtedly ruined homes and lives with its destructive path. Chris Rose touches upon these instances of brokenness to elicit sympathy from his audience. Throughout the novel, mental illness rears its ugly head. Tales such as “Despair” reveal heart-wrenching stories emerging from a cycle of loss. This particular article is concerned with the pull of New Orleans, its whisper in your ear when you’ve departed that drags you home. Not home as a house, because everything physical associated with home has been swept away by the storm and is now gone. Rather, it is concerned with home as a feeling, that concept that there is none other than New Orleans. Even when there is nothing reminiscent of what you once knew, a true New Orleanian will seek a fresh start atop the foundation of rubbish. This is a foreign concept for those not native to New Orleans, and a New Orleanian girl married to a man from Atlanta found her relationship split as a result of flooding waters. She was adamant about staying, and he returned to where he was from. When he came back to New Orleans for her to try and make it work, they shared grim feelings and alcohol, the result of which was the emergence of a pact reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. This couple decided they would kill themselves because they could see no light amongst the garbage and rot, and failure was draining them of any sense of optimism. She realized the fault in this agreement,
In conclusion, the flood at Buffalo Creek destroyed the inhabitant’s very social fabric. This in itself is not unique, but what was unique about Buffalo Creek is that there was no post disaster euphoria, where people who have survived the disaster are uplifted by the fact that the community is still present and viable. That was not the case in Buffalo Creek, mostly in part due to HUD’s internal policies but also due to the very devastation caused by the flood. The other thing that was unique about Buffalo Creek was that ninety-three percent of the survivors had diagnosable emotional disorders eighteen months after the disaster. Usually survivors of disasters are able to get over it and move on, but the survivors of the Buffalo Creek disaster were not able to do this because of their total loss of “Gemeinschaft� or sense of community.
One of the greatest injustices of American history included, starvation, illness, and death. These hardships were undeservingly forced upon an innocent group of people – the Native Americans. One may think that the Trail of Tears was only a simple journey the Indians made to discover new frontiers. This is not the case. The Trail of Tears was the result of the white man’s selfishness, causing Indians to lose their homes and belongings. The act was full of unfair treatment, cruelty, and heartlessness. This tragic event took place in the nineteenth century, and was mostly initiated by President Andrew Jackson. In 1814, Jackson proposed an idea for a new act called the Indian Removal Act. (pbs) This act was not widely accepted throughout America, but was initiated because of some Americans wanting more land and gold – resources owned by Native Americans. The Trail of Tears caused much controversy and confusion, and many tears and heartache followed along the way.
Emilie Durkheim described the concepts of social regulation and social integration, and how both are connected to suicide rates. Both of these concepts can also be used to analyze the effect that the Buffalo Creek flood had on individuals and the community. Using the ideas of social regulation and social integration as well as the book “Everything in Its Path” by Kai T. Erikson, we can see the consequences of the Buffalo Creek flood disaster.
The Johnstown Flood Stained the history of the United States. Over 2000 victims died and even more injured. The flood has been blamed on many people since it happened. One group individually brought about the flood. The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club made selfish changes threatening the effectiveness toward holding back a water overflow. The renovation made to the dam brought about the destruction killing many people and causing millions of dollars in damages.
Historical trauma has brought psychological effects on the Native American community. Many suffer from alcohol and drug abuse, depression, and poverty. I wondered why they do not get help from the government and after watching the documentary California’s “Lost” Tribes I began to understand that in any reservation the tribe is the government, so they do not have the same rights as a city outside the reservation. Many of the the reservations were placed in areas where they could not do any form of agriculture, so they did not have a source of income. Many of this reservations have to find ways to get themselves out of poverty and many of the reservations within California have found a way to get out of their poverty by creating casinos
Each of us, in time, will experience a heart-stopping reality - the death or loss of someone or something we love. Maybe it will be of a family member or just a pet we dearly cherished, but the feelings we have are all too real and all too painful. This loss is probably by far the greatest and most severe emotional trauma we can encounter, and the sense of loss and grief that follows is a healthy, natural, and important part of healing ("Death"). In The River Warren by Kent Meyers Jeff Gruber learns to deal with the grief associated with the loss of his younger brother, Chris. This grief is perhaps the strongest of all emotions that bind families together, but it can also be the hardest to overcome. We never really get over these feelings; we just absorb them into our lives and move on. According to Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, there are five basic stages of grief. They are denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. It is not unusual for people to be lost in one of the first four stages, and until they move on to acceptance
The path from trauma to recovery is an experience that many deal with in hopes of finding tranquility. We understand trauma through two lenses: catastrophic and wound. According to American Psychiatric Association, catastrophic trauma refers to the site of an event “outside the range of usual human experience,” while wound trauma, also known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), is “inflicted not upon the body but upon the mind” (Visvis 228). Fellow Cree men Xavier Bird and Elijah Whiskeyjack both experience distressing trauma through their role as snipers in the Great War. Xavier’s journey is hit with multiple obstacles that test his Native culture while trying to overcome the traumatic effects of the war as he tries to distance himself from the Eurocentric perspective. Joseph Boyden’s novel Three Day Road illustrates the importance of cultural beliefs in a world of ethnic differences as men face the hardship of war while surrounded by temptations and actions that cannot be undone which eventually leads some down a disoriented road of Native savagery.
I have explained the concepts of individual and large-group identity based on Volkan’s article. Also, particularly focuses on chosen trauma which refers to the shared mental representation of a past historical event. The historical event which they receive from an enemy group during suffering losses or humiliation. Due to the immeasurable of the trauma, group members leave with psychological wounds or humiliation which they pass down from generation to generation. Subsequent generations have gone through many tasks just as mourning losses or humiliation. The mental representation original trauma becomes a group identity’s larker since the given tasks are shared by most members of the group. A political leaders tend to reactivate chosen traumas during times of extreme change in a large-group’s history or during the large-group regression. This reactivation might become a foothold to go further the existing large-group
While it may seem like human survival after a traumatic event may be anarchy, yet after chaos there can be order, humans come together in light of horrible events and even in the worst disaster culture will survive. Therefore, humanity is not in as much trouble as it can be assumed in case of disaster.
Native American’s experience transference of historical trauma across generations and genders. The frequencies illustrate that across all generations of Nez Perce tribal members are aware of and feel with frequency the historical losses of their people.
Trauma is spread through close relationships with trauma survivors. Those most at risk for developing secondary trauma are those who are witness the emotional retelling of the trauma, including family, friends, medical providers. This retelling may come in many forms such as: through speaking, writing, or drawing (Whitfield 59). One develops secondary
The article, “A New Focus on the ‘Post; in Post-Traumatic Stress” by David Dobbs, talks about trauma as a whole and how some react to it. Dobbs writes, “Both culturally and medically, we have long seen it as arising from a single, identifiable disruption. You witness a shattering event, or fall victim to it-and as the poet Walter de la Mare put it, ‘the human brain works slowly: first the blow, hours afterward the bruise.” Holden experienced trauma ex...
Trauma can be defined as something that repeats itself. In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, trauma recurs in soldiers for different reasons. However, although their reasons for trauma are different, the things they carried can symbolize all the emotions and pasts of these soldiers. One man may suffer trauma from looking through letters and photographs of an old lover, while another man could feel trauma just from memories of the past. The word “carried” is used repeatedly throughout The Things They Carried. Derived from the Latin word “quadrare,” meaning “suitable,” O’Brien uses the word “carried” not to simply state what the men were carrying, but to give us insight into each soldiers’ emotions and character, his past, and his present.
The need to be trained in trauma response appears to be greater today than any previous time in history. Since the 21st century, traumatic events, due to natural disasters have been occurring more frequently. Vivid memories remain of the terrors of the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunamis; 2005 Hurricane Katrina; and in the Caribbean- the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. It is believed that we are likely to experience more devastating natural disasters especially in light of global warming, population growth and increase land usage (Riebeek, 2005; Charvériat, 2000). To provide a framework for discussion, a definition of natural disaster, in simple terms, is provided as “a natural event such as a flood, earthquake, or hurricane that causes great damage or loss of life” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2014). Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (hereafter referred to as ODPEM) refers to a natural disaster as “rare or extreme events in the environment that can adversely affect human life, property or our way of life; the impact exceeds a community’s or a nation’s capacity to respond to them” (2008). According to Child (1995), any conceptualization of the term natural disaster must include people as no hazard exists apart from the human response to it. Child (1995) further states that “the study of environmental hazards is an examination of the complex interactions between physical and human systems”. The focus of this paper is to examine the trauma related functions of this human response, how they impact individuals as well as societies with a close examination of the Caribbean context.