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The concept of psychosocial reflects the dynamic relationship and interplay between psychological and social issues.
“Psycho” refers to the psyche or the "soul" of a person. It has to do with the inner world, with feelings, thoughts, desires, beliefs and values and how we perceive ourselves and others. “Social” refers to the relationships and environment of an individual. It includes the material world and the social and cultural context in which people live, ranging from the intricate network of their relationships, over manifold cultural expressions to the community and the state. The inner world (psycho) and the outer world (social) influence each other.
The psychosocial approach implies that the well-being of people can only be improved if:
- Individuals are seen as having social, material and psychological needs and capacities.
- The dynamics between individuals and their groups/the collective are understood and addressed.
Most aid projects do not take all these factors into consideration but focus more on the material or the social aspects and more on the collective processes. However, whatever the specific focus of a project may be, all aspects will always have a bearing on the project beneficiaries and the project will influence all three dimensions. The psychosocial approach takes these inter-relationships into consideration and addresses them.
The psychosocial space
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In the context of extreme disempowerment due to direct or structural violence, the method and the objective of recovery is empowerment.
“Empowerment” contains the word ‘power’ that has many different meanings including agency, strength, capability, competence, authority, vigour etc. The following dimensions of power are central to the empowerment concept:
- At the individual level, power is power within. People are able to recognise their own situation as shaped by adaptation, dependence and/or oppression, and they develop a wish to change. They understand that they have the possibility to influence and shape their own life, that is they have the power to act, to make decisions, to solve problems.
- Empowerment includes power with, i.e. the realisation that individuals are not alone but are part of a group, and that changes can take place when people work together. This power involves thinking, acting and networking with others in a social context.
- As soon as the social context is perceived it becomes clear that the key issue is one of power relations in society. This third dimension deals with power as related to political goals and achievements. It ultimately is a question of power over others and ideally of sharing power in society.
Thus empowerment is not limited to developing more positive feelings about oneself and gaining insight into one’s situation. It also means doing something about it. It means actual participation in the social process with a realistic prospect of changing existing power structures.
To achieve empowerment, the nature and extent of disempowerment first has to be analysed closely. Disempowerment is the process of destruction, at an individual and social level. Empowerment is only possible if this destruction is recognised. People who have undergone great suffering do have the resources to help them survive. However in order to mobilise people’s strengths it is important to not deny their weaknesses. Consciously facing the losses, the undesired changes, the feelings of helplessness and despair, creates a basis to develop and use one’s own resources in a better way.
From Disempowerment to Empowerment
The interconnectedness of social, material/economic and psychological disempowerment processes can be analysed with the help of the Empowerment Tool (see Toolkit, Sheet 5a). It provides a framework of questions that help to structure relevant information to describe the fragmentation of individuals, groups and communities so that in a next step, the required changes towards an improved situation or the perspectives for empowerment can be identified. |
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During war and crises, disempowerment is characterized by key social and corresponding mental processes. The main psychosocial dimensions of violent conflicts are threat/fear, destruction/trauma, and loss/grief. They have to be considered when working with people in conflict areas.
Threat and Fear
Threat
Violent conflicts are characterized by many types of threats. The worst are those to the physical and psychic integrity of a person.
Chronic Fear
Fear is usually a temporary phenomenon. However, if the threat becomes permanent and chronic, then fear becomes chronic, too. It becomes part of the individual’s mental structure and gains an existence that is independent of the original threat. This may result in people staying psychologically on guard even if the actual danger has long gone. Chronic fear is the social by-product of living in areas of war and conflict.
People do not wish to appear vulnerable nor do they want to burden others with their insecurity or anxieties. This culture of silence isolates the individual and weakens families and groups because people no longer share their concerns. Chronic fear reduces one’s ability to protect oneself. People can no longer distinguish between situations which are safe and those which are dangerous. Sometimes fear is simply denied and individuals endanger themselves and others because they no longer perceive the dangers.
Destruction and Trauma
Destruction
Violent conflicts lead to destruction, not only of people and material goods, but also of emotions and social relationships. When a house is destroyed by bombs people not only lose their dwelling, they also lose a place of refuge and belonging.
Trauma as a process
The psychological equivalent of destruction is what we call trauma. Trauma changes the individual’s view of the world permanently, even if some of what was destroyed can be repaired later. The word “trauma” comes from Greek and means wound. A psychosocial trauma is a deep emotional wound, a response to social and political destruction that overwhelms the individual’s capacity to cope. A traumatic breakdown can result after a single event or after a series of events that become traumatic because of their cumulative effect. The social and political process that causes the trauma will also determine its further course. Trauma is therefore a process shaped by the interaction between the social environment and the mental state of the individual. Psychosocial trauma should not be misunderstood as the psychological result of a clearly circumscribed or specific event. The process of trauma continues in a healing or destructive way after wars, direct violence and persecution have come to an end.
Trauma is a psychological process but its development is shaped by socio-political events. This interrelation is best reflected by the concept of sequential traumatization (Hans Keilson) which describes the course of the traumatic process according to specific historic periods.
Sequential traumatization
Hans Keilson defined the following sequences for his work with Jewish war orphans in the Netherlands: a) the enemy occupation of the Netherlands and the beginning of terror against the Jewish minority, b) the period of direct persecution, which included the deportation of parents and children and/or the separation of children from parents, c) the post-war period, during which the main issue was the appointment of guardians (Keilson, 1992). Keilson realized that what had happened to the children in the post-war period was more important for their long-term development than what had happened to them during the period of direct persecution.
In our adaptation of Keilson's concept we identify the following six sequences to describe the situation in conflict and post-conflict areas: a) before the traumatic process, b) beginning of the persecution, c) acute persecution: direct terror d) acute persecution: chronification, e) time of transition, f) after the persecution.
The most important traumatic sequence begins after the persecution. It is often at this point that people become ill. Help is possible and useful in all traumatic sequences; however this support must be guided by the specific possibilities and limits of each sequence.
Healing?
Any approach that reduces trauma to a mental or physical pathology must be strictly avoided. Trauma is not simply an illness but always a social and political process as well. It is therefore important to develop context-specific definitions and treatments of trauma.
Traumatic experiences never disappear completely from the mind; the goal can therefore not be healing in its usual sense. Those affected by trauma may, however, learn to integrate the traumatic experience into their lives and find a way out of the role of the victim. They may at some point be able to lead a fairly normal life. However, their suffering, which is linked to the social process both in origin and throughout its development, will not stop.
Support therefore should not be limited to the individual working through of trauma. Equally or maybe even more important is society's acknowledgment of what has happened: in this way the extreme suffering of individuals can be shared and collectively contained.
Loss and Grief
Loss
Threat and destruction during a conflict always imply loss. People lose their homes, cities are destroyed, family members, friends and acquaintances die; they lose their life projects, their hopes and aspirations. Loss is directly linked to threat and destruction, but must nevertheless be perceived as a separate social category. Loss and dealing with loss determine what happens in society at large, especially after the acute conflict comes to an end.
Grief
The psychic counterpart to loss is grief. Grief is the way in which we deal with loss. The course of the mourning process determines whether loss is integrated and psychologically accepted and can thus become history, or whether it continues to affect life negatively.
A mourning process can roughly be divided into two phases. The first phase is about acknowledging and accepting the loss, the second phase entails returning to a reality which no longer contains what has been lost. In the second phase, people reflect on the lost relationship and remember the strengths and weaknesses of the loved one.
Unstable conditions, the traumatization of the survivors and the struggle for survival make it hard for people to go through an ordinary grieving process. If the mourning process comes to a standstill and cannot be completed, people are at risk. Emotionally they cannot let go, they remain embroiled with death and therefore do not engage with life again. |
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Conflict transformation
Conflict transformation means reducing violence by changing and developing the conflict in all its aspects and dimensions, from society to the inner life of the individual. The objective is not to abolish conflict, but to promote the ability to deal with it constructively and to handle differences without the use of violence. Coping with the psychosocial consequences of violent conflicts is important to ensure positive peace.
From a psychosocial point of view, for a promising conflict transformation it is very important to address the following consequences of violent conflicts:
The consequences of threat/fear, destruction/trauma, loss/grief
People in conflict regions live in a constant state of insecurity. Fear erodes social networks and interferes with communication. People no longer speak about their own suffering and are impaired in their awareness of the suffering of the others. Fear needs to be integrated, not overcome. What needs to be overcome is the denial of fear and the increasing inability to handle conflict. If chronic fear is perceived and acknowledged, it loses much of its destructive force and can, with time, be adequately integrated into the individual’s mental structure and social relationships. It is then also easier for people to protect themselves.
For conflict transformation it is essential to deal with the losses and the dead and to allow for grieving to take place. This, as well as trauma work, is at the core of individual coping and the reconstruction of society and peacebuilding.
The marginalisation of the victims
Mistrust, an increasing shortage of resources and the growing polarisation of power contribute to increasing the dynamics of exclusion. The threat of marginalisation and exclusion for direct victims is higher than for anyone else. Friends and neighbours often feel helpless and do not see anything they could do to offer support in view of the victims’ overwhelming suffering. Exclusion and stigmatisation of the victims is an expression of the fragmentation and destruction of the collective social structure. Mistrust and fear take over and basic ethical principles and human values become more and more eroded.
The change in social structures and social rules
Violent conflicts change social structures. People take on new roles and lose old ones. Women often have to do men’s work, men can lose their influences as head of the family and children sometimes become soldiers. Many become impoverished, others suddenly become rich. These social processes sometimes release feelings of excitement, but often they lead to feelings of confusion, uselessness and a lack of self-esteem. Some people can no longer live up to their former role expectations, while others fulfil their new roles so well that they are in conflict with the image they previously had of themselves. |
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The power of the past
When war and destruction come to an end and a time of peace and reconstruction can begin, many people would like to forget the past as quickly as possible, albeit for different reasons: the perpetrators because they fear vengeance; the victims because they would like to leave the horrors they have experienced behind them; and those who tried to stay uninvolved because they do not want to get drawn into new conflicts or feel responsible for what happened. At the same time, all kinds of actors try to exploit the past for their own purposes, knowing only too well how effectively it can be used to manipulate people's emotions. No matter how hard people may try, the horrors they experienced cannot be eradicated from their minds.
The importance of dealing with the past
Successful conflict transformation depends on the specific ways in which societies manage to deal with the events of the past. A past that has become taboo, excluded from open discussion, cannot become history and poses a threat to present and future stability. It is important to deal with the past in order to be able to build a peaceful future.
After violent conflicts, victims seek public restoration of their personal dignity and the dignity of their family members. They strive for personal and social rehabilitation and reparation and want to see offenders being held responsible for their deeds.
Restorative Justice
Truth commissions are a prominent example of restorative justice. They are a way of breaking the silence surrounding the crimes of the past. By establishing a record about those crimes they provide society with an orientation that counteracts historical revisionism. The official acknowledgment of what happened to the disappeared and murdered persons, not only helps family members through the mourning process, but also shifts the problem from the personal psychological sphere to the social and political process. Truth commissions can only to some extent facilitate the social healing of the victims since coming to terms with one’s experiences is a very complex and long-term process. Establishing the truth is therefore, at best, a means of facilitating the mourning process and providing a framework for addressing conflicts over the past in a non-violent way.
Retributive Justice
Retributive justice covers legal criminal proceedings in national and international courts of justice. Proceedings of this nature give a clear signal that perpetrators should be punished but it is difficult to address victims’ needs in legal court proceedings. In the case of international court proceedings, the victims question the extent to which their local concerns are likely to be considered. Furthermore, the courts are often accused of applying ‘the law of the victors’. Differences can also arise between the local, culturally-linked sense of justice, and the more ‘western’ oriented culture of international law. Despite the projections to retributive justice, criminal proceedings are what many people call for after a war.
Compensatory Justice
There are many different forms of reparations for victims after violent conflicts, among them compensation payments and access to service entitlements. Compensation payments alone remain inadequate since they can lead to moral dilemmas and feelings of betrayal and complicity, especially for the family members of ‘disappeared’ persons. Reparations in the form of service entitlements (medical, educational or housing assistance) are slightly less morally contradictory for the victims. Yet, in countries with high levels of poverty, reparations inevitably provoke feelings of envy towards the allegedly privileged victims. Granting particular rights must therefore be linked with explaining why certain people receive social privileges and others do not. Diverse groups of victims should participate in the design, the implementation and the monitoring of reparation programs in order to assure a victim-friendly and accessible reparations program that helps to guarantee the respect for the dignity of the victims.
Memory Work
Public and collective processes of remembering are an essential part of conflict transformation. Coming to terms with the past is not limited to legal procedures, but is part of the cultural process. Collective memory can be fostered and developed by means of memorials, monuments, public discussions, audio and visual productions or by writing. Locating the disappeared and the burial of the dead is another vital part of remembrance and collective mourning processes.
The multiple confrontations with the past promote the process of conflict transformation by deindividualising and socialising the grief experienced. Remembrance is the processing and transformation of the past in the present; it is a continuous process of discussion, out of which perspectives for the future are developed. Memory work brings forth conflicts but also provides a framework where they can be debated, explored and redirected. For the victims, collective memory work is also significant in a personal sense. Parts of their suffering can only be addressed with the help of the community. Through the acknowledgement victims receive in the collective memory process, social reintegration is promoted. Besides, individual suffering is diminished by being shared in the collective. |
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Reconciliation is a voluntary act and cannot be imposed. It involves five interwoven an related strands:
- Developing a shared vision of an interdependent and fair society
- Acknowledging and dealing with the past
- Building positive relations
- Significant cultural and attitudinal change
- Substantial social, economic and political change
A Working Definition of Reconciliation |
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