The author studies the nature of the therapist’s engagement, more precisely his counter-transference when faced with the treatment of trauma. The example of Agathe is presented; her treatment takes place in the particularly tragic atmosphere of Rwanda.
Archives de catégorie : ENG – En guerre – 2001 T.19 n°2
Mouzayan Osseiran-Houbballah : what becomes of child soldiers after the war?
In this article, the author reports on the metapsychological work centred around these child soldiers, namely, what triggers off their murderous impulse in the first place, followed by a description of the traumatic event that affects their psychic future.
She uses as an illustration the account of an ex child-soldier “ Samir ” who, in the company of his peers, executed 350 people in one hour, when he was 14 years old.
Twenty years later, Samir is unable to forget. He continues to be a prisoner of his drugs and the repetitive traumatic dreams that petrify him.
Adnan-Adel Houbballah : war scene and adolescent fantasies
The author starts from the idea that every war is determined by a fantasy presiding over the actions of men. This psychical reality is all the more true in that civil war, which has become a universal phenomenon, has its causality in the myth of the murder of the father. At this intersection between myth and fantasy, the adolescent finds himself back at the center of his Oedipal preoccupations. The war scene becomes for him the privileged place for enacting his aggressive and incestuous fantasies. A strategy that consists of dispensing with the symbolic castration, especially since the ideal father bursts onto the scene to compensate for the weakness of the real father.
Francis Maqueda : both a captive and a soldier.two figures of adolescence in the mozambiquan civil war.
In the aftermath of a seventeen year war covering the south aestern part of south Africa, Mozambique’s civil war victims count up to about one million of the fifteen million whole population ; a third of the inhabitants have suffered displacement. The madness of war includes that of thousands of children and youths drafted as servants and soldiers either willingly or forced to. They have been beaten to be forced to fight, being treatened of death, they have either been tortured or have themselves tortured others. Most of them have been drafted during their childhood, so they have become adults or adolescents during the war period.
Understanding this spécific population’s psyche implies using complexe compréhensive méthods ; the character features of général and psychodynamic range are related to child-victim clinical practice, as well as that of authors of extreme violence ; the ethno-psychiatric dimension being the model of other more specific issues related to local particularities. Cultur and the fundamental pact which links men between themselves are both, through these situations, rudely attecked, and this is prejudicial for the future.
Marie-Rose Moro, Christian Lachal, Thierry Baudet : extreme traumata and adolescence
The authors, all three of whom are involved in caring for adolescents in war zones as part of Doctors Without Borders, describe the traumatic semiology with reference to two parameters allowing for much variability: age and cultural context. They show the complexity of the semiology by means of a clinical history. Lastly, they analyze some parameters that must be established in order to recognize and treat the impact of trauma on these adolescents who are in pain, tragically hopeless and who sometimes conceal their suffering behind the mask of the hero, of violence and of transgression.
Michèle Bertrand : on war traumata
Trauma and traumatism should be considered from a dynamic perspective, that is to say as something which is ongoing and changes with time. Thus, the range of PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorders) is limited, insofar as it is static, referring only to symptoms of a certain type. The recently promoted notion of resilience confirms this dynamic point of view. The adolescent may present disorders which do not belong to what is properly called “war neurosis”, but which seem more serious and troubling.
Bernard Doray:concepcion of gaza : very young soldiers
This paper begins with two figures from the clinical study of the extermination and forced self-extermination of the Mayan Indians of Guatamala. This approach, situated between individual treatment and social history, is contrasted with the case of Birahima, a child soldier from Liberia and Sierra Leone, which belongs to the ideological literature and history of the present day.
These are two ways of approaching a process that will swell in rhythm with the tide of impoverishment and de-symbolization now sweeping the planet. International agencies set up juridical safeguards, but the psychological accompaniment of former child and adult soldiers still benefits from little genuine clinical competence.