Common Shock: Witnessing Violence Every Day : How We Are Harmed, How We Can Heal - Rilegato

Weingarten, Kathy

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0525947426 ISBN 13: 9780525947424

Casa editrice: E P Dutton, 2003

Riassunto

Identifies the effects and long-term consequences of trauma on the human psyche, explaining how responses to violence can be passed on to subsequent generations while revealing how a greater awareness of the effects of violence can promote healing.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

: Kaethe Weingarten, Ph.D., associate clinical professor in Harvard University's Department of Psychiatry, has been on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School since 1979. Dr. Weingarten also teaches at the Family Institute of Cambridge and has taught across the United States and in Africa, Australia, Canada, Europe, and New Zealand.

Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.:

1

"The Thousand Natural Shocks..."

The other day I took my friend's daughter, age seven, to the park. While I was pushing her on the swing, a father smacked his small son in the face. Turning away from this man and little boy, I saw my young friend, Anna, riveted with attention to the same scene.

Within a few pushes Anna began to kick her feet to slow herself down, and soon she was able to reach her feet to the ground, where she scuffed her shoes, the better to stop. Turning her head toward me, she said matter-of-factly, "I don't want to stay here anymore. Can we go home?"

Had I been bending down to remove a leaf off my leg, had I been chatting with the woman pushing her daughter on the swing next to ours, had I even been yawning, eyes temporarily closed, I might easily have missed what Anna saw. The little boy had not made one peep, so no sound from him would have returned my gaze to the sandbox where he was playing.

Had I missed what Anna witnessed, I would not have known what had distressed her sufficiently to change her plans for our time together. Nor understood why this little girl, who herself had been scolded that morning for hitting her younger sister, now wanted to go home rather than play on every piece of the park's equipment. I wouldn't have known to take her hand and ask her how she felt about what the man had done to the little boy. I wouldn't have gotten her reply: "He was mean. It wasn't fair."

Anna experienced common shock. It is common because it happens all the time, to everyone in any community. It is a shock because, regardless of our response-spaciness, distress, bravado-it affects our mind, body, and spirit.

Had I not seen and not asked, I wouldn't have known that I needed to help her express and rid herself of the bit of violence she had glimpsed and was now carrying within her. I wouldn't have asked her, "Do you think there is something we can do, right now, by ourselves, to show that we don't like it when people hurt each other?"

"Like what?" she had said.

"I don't know. Like stamp our feet," I said stamping both my feet, "and saying, 'Don't hurt people!'"

Which is what we did. For two blocks. We stamped our feet hard, shouting, "Don't hurt people. Don't hurt girls. Don't hurt boys. Don't hurt mothers. Don't hurt grandpas. Don't hurt cats. Don't hurt dogs." Until it turned silly, and we were shouting, "Don't hurt the sky. Don't hurt the stars." And then, I think the episode was over for Anna. When her mom came to pick her up, I didn't remember to tell her what had happened.

Whether we want to or not, we cannot escape witnessing such events. Sometimes these events occur between people we know. At other times we may just happen to be somewhere-like in a neighborhood park-and see a gratuitous example of violence. Unexpected scenes may accost us when we are following our usual routines, like turning on the television moments before our favorite show, but on this occasion the horrific dramatic finale of the previous program assaults us. Or an extraordinary event creates a disturbance that ripples throughout our lives. For some, the Columbia's white contrails streaking across a deep-blue sky will remain etched in their minds. For others, September 11, 2001-9/11-will be remembered forever.

The witnessing of violence and violation, events that fall on a continuum from the ordinary to the extraordinary, jolts us into a response I call common shock. While some react with obvious physical symptoms, many of us respond as if coated with Teflon; nothing sticks. That is the paradox of common shock. The more we witness, the less we register. Violence and violation become like the wallpaper, just there.

None of us escapes this kind of everyday witnessing, and yet many of us have never "noticed" it. After September 11, however, many more people have a reference point for understanding that the witnessing of violence can produce immediate and long-term distress. While the violence we saw that day was massive and extraordinary, there are also consequences to witnessing the small and ordinary forms of violence that occur in our lives.

Let's imagine that your town has a road detour and you are proceeding cautiously, navigating through unfamiliar streets. The girl behind you is tailing you so closely that you decide to slow down further, hoping she'll back off. Instead, you look in the rearview mirror and her face is contorted into a grimace and she's raising her middle finger at you. You are momentarily shocked.

Or, you're sitting in the bleachers during a Little League game, enjoying your son's winning streak. Kicked back, you're chatting with your neighbors, talking about this child's stance, that child's swing, another child's way of slapping his thigh before he puts the glove to his chest. To your far right a father on the other team is laughing good-naturedly at a child who has just slid into third base and is covered with dirt. "Oh, it doesn't matter," he says to no one in particular. "If he cleaned up, his parents wouldn't notice the difference anyway."

The child is dark skinned. You freeze. Should you walk past the folks between you and this man and say something to him? Ignore him, pretending that there are no racist implications? Should you comment to the person sitting next to you? Tell the coach? Or, just let it go? After all, it is one more thing you feel helpless to do anything about without causing a big stink you have no energy for anyway. "Life," you say to yourself.

Violence and Violation

What slice of life is it? These anecdotes are examples of violence and violation.1 Even though violence and violation surround us, defining what they are is not easy. People are probably most aware of the category of personal violence, which occurs when we harm or injure another. We can observe the consequences, whether the harm is physical, psychological, spiritual, or material. We have no trouble grasping that a father will hurt his son if he beats him and will harm his daughter if he fondles her.

There is another kind of violence, though, that is both harder to notice and harder to discern how it affects us. This kind of violence occurs when the social system itself exploits some people to the benefit of others. It produces the same kind of harms, but to classes of individuals.2

The noted peace scholar, Johan Galtung, first proposed the term for this concept: structural violence. He provides a thought-provoking example of how personal and structural violence differ. If one husband beats his wife, that is obviously an instance of personal violence, he states, "but when one million husbands keep one million wives in ignorance there is structural violence."3 Structural violence also creates social injustice.

Violation may be subtler and even more difficult to notice than violence. In fact, many people find themselves confused after an experience of violation, wondering what exactly happened to make them feel so awful. Violation occurs directly between people and indirectly through structural inequities and injustice. In addition, illness, disability, aging, discrimination, and immigration can set the stage for keenly felt experiences of violation. While violation may not leave a physical mark, there can be psychic traces, for violation disrupts our sense of meaning and makes us feel fear and dread.4

In this book I am particularly interested in the witnessing of everyday violence and violation, but I am keenly aware that what we experience as everyday depends on where we live and who we are. What I may witness in my daily life in a Boston suburb is different from what I would witness as everyday in rural Iowa, a South African township, a Palestinian refugee camp, or an Israeli city.

Everyday violence and violation can evolve from the small to the massive, from one beating to a gang war. Our responses as a society can also escalate, causing great harm. We may start by devaluing some people's worth, then stigmatizing them, then excluding them then, finally, controlling their lives.5 A restriction here, an identity card there, may provoke violent protest followed by counter acts of genocide. But the cycles of violence and violation that cause common shock are preventable.6 That's why our responses to violence and violation are also the subject of this book, since it is in understanding these responses that we have a chance to undermine them.

Common Shock

Witnessing violence and violation can produce common shock. I chose the word common to emphasize that the experience is widespread, it is collective, and it belongs to all of us.

Common shock is ubiquitous. Routinely, we experience events and exchanges that disturb us. Every one of us must metabolize daily jolts. Since few people are aware of the chronic debilitating effects of common shock, few people know how to deal with it themselves or, crucially, help children do so. This book will help you become aware of yourself as an everyday witness to violence and violation, and provide you with tools to cope effectively with its consequences.

Although trained as a clinical psychologist and family therapist in the early 1970s, my experience with witnessing violence and violation, and my sensitivity to it, long preceded my professional training. Throughout these pages I will be drawing on a range of experiences and sources to show that though unintentional witnessing of violence and violation is harmful, it can be transformed into intentional, compassionate witnessing, which has the potential for addressing and alleviating our misery and the misery of others. There are two sides to the witnessing coin:

one in which we are shocked, and the other in which we know what to do.

But first we need to "catch" that we are witnessing violence and violation. Perhaps your teenage son, whose speech bears traces of the fact that he is a recent English speaker, and whose face is clearly Semitic, comes home and tells you that a shopkeeper in a music store harassed him and his Jordanian friends, warning them in a threatening voice that the store had surveillance...

Su questa edizione

• Editore: E P Dutton
• Data di pubblicazione: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0525947426
• ISBN 13: 9780525947424
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 385