Search

Children?s Narratives of Traumatic Losses Due to Political Conflict or War: The Role of Moral Disruption and Mourning. In this paper we argue for the inclusion of a moral dimension in the study of loss and trauma in the context of children?s or their relevant community?s response to war. We argue that, in contexts of political violence, just when the child may be experiencing traumatic losses, so is his or relevant community, nation or culture. The (re)-construction of a life narrative is often prescribed as a therapeutic means of attenuating the impact of potentially traumatic events on an individual or community?s life. Increasingly the recreation of continuity following life-shattering events is seen as involving transformations rather than adaptations alone. However, following political violence, the losses and trauma associated with it, the child must re-create a narrative at the same time that his or her relevant culture(s) or nations(s) are struggling to do so and in the context of conflictual historical accounts, memories and narratives. Disruptions experienced by children in contexts of critical social and political conflict and war include fragmentation and loss in the moral as well as the physical, relational and social order. This conceptualization, which may account for the potentially traumatic impact of these experiences, extends beyond the more narrow construct of posttraumatic stress. In this way, psychological and socio-moral approaches need not be seen as opposing positions. Children?s play and verbal narratives are media par excellence to explore the fragmentation, integrations and transformations associated with disruptive events.We present research of our own as well as other studies that indicate that the loss of a rule-governed moral universe is reflected in the representations of the children who had encountered such contexts. Dilemmas related to good and evil, trust and betrayal, protection and aggression are prevalent in children?s representations yet death looms as the consequence of a wrong choice. Retaliation fantasies may be intense but attribution of blame uncertain. Ideological beliefs strongly affect response. Children?s ability (in parallel to their parent?s ability) to address these issues affected their clinical status. The difficulty in mourning the loss of a moral universe as well as a relational one contributes to traumatic grief. The recognition that a rule-governed moral universe has been disrupted or lost is critical in designing interventions for children who have experienced potentially traumatic life events. Such a conceptualization permits interventions to integrate the political, social and psychological dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]