Is the suffering of others also our own? In thinking that it might in fact be, societies expand the circle of the we.

The environment suddenly shifts in an unforeseen and unwelcome manner.

 

Move to strangeness

 

Human beings need security, order, love, and connection

 

Memories about the past guide this thinking about the future

 

Reactions to a volcano-like event that shook the foundations of the social world.

 

Holding an attitude of benign neglect or cynical indifference

 

A blow to the psyche that breaks through one’s defenses so suddenly and with such brutal force that one can not react to it effectively

 

An important part of the self has disappeared… “We” no longer exist as a connected pair or a linked cells in a larger communal body 

 

Truth goes underground

 

One cannot simply leave behind

 

Buried in the unconscious, the event is experienced irrationally, in the nightmares

 

Denials that insist on looking to the future and forgetting the past

 

Fragmented and polarized social order

 

Bridging the gap between event and representation

 

A spiral of signification

Source:  ALEXANDER_Cultural-Trauma