A sense of honor is necessary for growing up. With regard to several clinical examples the author shows what is happening to the contrary during the humiliations of the war in Burundi. What mechanisms are at work? What are the uses of the group?
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Jean-Claude Métraux : from the victim to the actor
This paper presents an intent of synthesis of the symposium and outlines its main results : interpretation of clinical data and critical discussion of post-traumatic disorders ; child soldiers’ psychology; added problem of exile ; reflexions on societal and social memories ; usual trend to the grief dimension; dynamics between individual and community, psychis and society. Il will be proponed to reverse the usual perspective, which implies a simultaneous partial redefinition of psychotherapist’s role, engaged citizen and social actor on the first lines of History.
François Lebigot : young french soldiers put to the test in sarajevo
The French army’s new assignments (peacekeeping, interposition) though particularly trying psychologically, have shown in both the youngest and the more seasoned soldiers an astonishing capacity for dominating their own violence. The situations they have had to face in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995, described here, bring together all the conditions liable to drive these subjects into uncontrollable drive overflow.
From this one could conclude that youths who join the army, often as they are emerging from a difficult adolescence, are looking for discipline, order, an ideal that would enable them to have peaceful relations with others. Because of the place and the time in question, they have often paid dearly for their learning, and missed the hoped-for reconciliation with humanity.
Yassaman Montazami-Ramade : adolescent blood nuptials : soldiers and martyrs in iran
Following the collapse of revolutionary utopias, Iranian adolescents develop through their active role as voluntary enlistees in the Iran-Iraq war a “ culture of death ”, wherein the quest for the identity of martyr takes the place of a process of subjectivation.
Fundamentalist Islamic ideology and war fanaticism induce behaviors of narcissistic withdrawal, which prevent these youths from attaining the dimension of adult sexuality and going on from there to appropriate a discourse for themselves within a repressive society.
Through the clinical case of a former adolescent soldier, this article tries to show how this war has become the only response – in the form of an impasse – to adolescent processes for thousands of young Iranians.
Khapta Akhmedova : the shattered future
The author approaches the principle difficulty of adolescents in a refugee camp: their inability to project themselves into the future.
“ When we began to work with adolescents who have been through war, we observed that their “ past ” was limited to the period when they experienced the war. We also noted that their imaginings about the war were either absent or traumatizing. ”
Several clinical observations support this assessment and allow for three conclusions :
– one must not proceed too quickly with adolescents in modifying their image of the future
– one must not create images for them
– one must not fear their terrible images
Kury Idrissov : clinical work in ethno-therapy
The author presents a clinical example relevant to the ethno-therapeutic method applied to some adolescents in Chechnya.
Frédérique Drogoul : firsthand accounts from chechnya
The authors recount tragic events experienced by four adolescents in Chechnya; their repercussions of these; the kinds of psychical defence that were observed; the therapeutic treatment that was set up.
Naasson Munyandamusta : beyond the hills
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.
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.