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The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2019, No. (12), Public History

Danutė Gailienė
The captive mind is worse than repressions. Psychotraumatological study of historical trauma in Lithuania

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Keywords: soviet trauma, long-term effects of political repression, transgenerational transfer of trauma, transgenerational transmission of resilience, psychotraumatology, cultural complexes

Abstract:
In the Vilnius University in Lithuania, the psychological research into long-term effects of soviet trauma has been carried out. The psychotraumatological and the psychodynamic analytic approaches have been employed the most frequently. These studies have provided important data about the complexity of soviet trauma. A representative study in a large sample of politically repressed people showed the long-term effects of such heavy traumatization on the victims. In the intergenerational studies of long-term traumatization appeared that not only vulnerability is transferred, but resilience too. It is transferred by the most traumatized people – those who experienced the political repressions of the regime. Paradoxically, in the later generations, the offspring of the families victimized by the regime are psychologically sturdier than the offspring of the families who adjusted to the regime. In the intergenerational perspective, there are more perilous things than experiencing direct repressions of the regime. Adjusting to the regime could have been much more harmful than direct suffering. Methodological question what is victimization due to the Soviet regime is worthy of consideration.

About Author:
DANUTĖ GAILIENĖ - professor of clinical psychology at Vilnius University, Institute of Psychology, Department of Clinical Psychology. E-mail: danute.gailiene[at]fsf.vu.lt. ORCID 0000-0003-0663-8489.

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