16.05.24. HistoricaltraumaAnd modernity...
A book has late been published, which from the position of studies and investigation characteristic of social and political psychology indicates the sources, would like to say, an eternal and inactive current way of reasoning and treating the state in Poland. It's about work. Michał BilewiczPresident Andrzej Duda, by the way, has been reluctant to give a well-deserved professorship title to whom he has been for many years. The book is calledTraumaland. Poles in the shadow of the past (Mando Publishing, Krakow 2024). Concerns the problems that have been dealt with late Records a presentation of books by Katarzyna Kasi and Grzegorz Markowski, Andrzej Leder, Jan Sowa or Jarosław Kuisz (see text Seven wishes... of 8.2.2024). seemingly we are dealing with a “hot problem” ...
The question is: how is it possible and what causes young Poles, those who, after 1989, represent successive generations of people born and increasing up in an independent country, imitate the way of thinking, language and patterns of behaviour characteristic of the times of happily past – those who grew up “generations of subjection”, as Kuisz describes them (see also,The culture of submission is over. Young Poles, Liberalism and the future of the state, Warsaw 2018, p. 31). In a lighter form, we find clear signs of specified attitudes – says the same author – "in computer games, undershirts, tv series or books for mass audiences". The alleged independency marches are clearly saturated with them. In the background of all specified patriotic actions, constantly in any case, they pulsate as if from time to time tendencies to divide into their own and enemies and everything that follows from it...
Bilewicz, addressing these issues, focuses primarily on planet War II and its intellectual consequences for the life of the nation. It starts with a description marked by a dramatic past of the location of its place of work (Department of Psychology of the University of Warsaw at Stawki Street), in order to find the subject of further investigation and the resulting reflection:
Yeah, we all live on graves. This is where we study, study, work. We rise and rise children, decision dogs, sunbathe in the summer, collect apples and mushrooms in the fall. In winter we complain about roadmen who have not snowed the streets decently again. We take on politicians and taxes, smog, road pirates. All this happens with a traumatic background story. Not even in the background – only due to her. Without knowing historical trauma, it is impossible to realize what Poland looks like today, how Poles respond to failures and successes, how they deal with crises and conflicts, why they cannot talk about past and treat others like enemies. This is what this book is about (Traumaland...( p. 13).
A small further puts Bilewicz the basic question: “Where do Poles and Poles come from today?” And he responds like this:
We are not connected by the community of origin – among us are descendants of Volovian shepherds who settled in Beskids, and descendants of judaic converts who received baptism along with Polish names of Majewski, Szymanowski or Jezioran. We do not share a community of destiny – there are fewer places in Europe where as long as feudal relations have survived. Though we boast of the past of kings, knights, poesy created by enlightened layers, and shame on the chasm of nobility, most of us have chiefly parchment peasants among our ancestors. de facto Slaves of those we tell in Polish past lessons. After all, we do not share the views of our ancestors – even a 100 years ago Poles shot each another on the Warsaw Bridge of Kierbedza in a short but unblooded civilian war known as the May coup. Poles were fundamentally different erstwhile it came to the visions of the state, and even disagreed about who belongs to their people and who does not.
And summing up this passage of his reflection, he adds:
So if we ask ourselves what common experience has shaped those who are Poles today, the answer will be obvious. This experience is the past of war [...] The ancestors of contemporary Poles are people who have experienced the top crime in the past of humanity, erstwhile in a tiny area, in today's Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, 2 totalitarianisms killed 14 million civilians and prisoners of war. Poles were victims of criminal activities – exports, executions, pacification of villages, mass rapes, forced labour camps and concentration camps. At the same time, they saw the genocide of Jews and the extermination of the Roma. In the business reality, they were not simply passive witnesses of this tragedy, as they frequently effort to present themselves in the far from actual school textbooks. The Holocaust ended the past of Polish Jews, whose after the war and subsequent migrations only a fewer 1000 were left from the pre-war 3 millionth community (Traumaland..., pp. 15-16).
In further parts of his book Bilewicz presents descriptions of the situation, events and results of Polish and global research, which let to specify the concept of trauma, including historical trauma, as well as the signs of its inheritance and its determinants. These include group narcissism, a culture of complaint, victim mythologies, or conspiracy theories. So we will read about the earlier and rather fresh examples of these phenomena, specified as behaviors and conspiracy concepts that caused the coronavirus pandemic. We will read not only about what is crucial for the Polish historical trauma, but besides about events concerning another straumatized nations, specified as those related to the genocide in Rwanda or the past of Canadian boarding schools (see also: Joanna Gierak-Onoszko, The 27th Death of Toby Obed, Evidence Publishing House, Warsaw 2019).
The editorial note accompanying Bilewicz's book offers in any case specified a neat shorthand of his stories on the subject of "Traumaland residents":
Untrustful of the state and all institutions. Always complaining and dissatisfied. He's full of fear and fear. At the same time, they are ready to mobilize enormously during the crisis and aid others erstwhile they are in need. These are the people of Traumaland.
The author invites to research the social psychology of Poles. It shows that we're not unique. Like another historically traumatized nations, we have adapted to the hard conditions in which our ancestors came to live. But are we doomed to constantly callback hard history? Is there a way out of the planet of anxiety and hypersensitivity?
The cover note on this last question will proceed to be derived from the reading of Bilewicz's book by the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Bogdan de Barbaro. It sounds like this:
Michał Bilewicz shows what cognitive traps our consciousness is exposed to, immersed in martyrdom and patriotism built on it. But it does not halt at the aetiology and psychology of Traumaland. She proposes therapy: to get to know, to problematize, realize and tame the historical trauma in which we are immersed, and then to recover personal, social and political affidavits. due to the fact that "Ptraumatic growth" is possible – if we realize our national PTSD.
Here we add a post-op opinion of social scientist Daniel Bar-Tal. It is not hard to agree with her:
Book Traumaland is written in a reader-friendly way, evokes many examples from the world, the results of the latest intellectual investigation – but is besides rich in the author's reflections and reflections. The reading of this book is simply a actual readerial adventure, and in the end it is not easy to compose consecutive on specified a demanding topic.
In any case, there is no uncertainty that it would be good to be aware of what, for each and all 1 of us, means, in fact, to cultivate a thought characteristic of life in Traumaland and to submit to visions that make and fuel its circles. Note, for example, that not more than 2 days ago, i.e. on 14 May 2024, there was an exam in Polish of this year's eighth graders, and the examination tasks concerned, among others, Stones to the Sun Aleksandra Kamiński. In the context of Bilewicz's presented book, commenting on this fact seems unnecessary. The questions stay about who organizes projects specified as historical reconstructions, which Bilewicz mentions, and above all, who, how and for what intent determines the substance of cognition in Polish schools, focusing the education of fresh generations on maintaining historical trauma alternatively than knowing the essences of past events...
