Collective trauma
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A collective trauma is a psychological effect on an entire society. Traumatic events that emotionally touch nearly every member of said society will often induce a collective trauma. As a result of such trauma, often media, politicians and, in some extreme instances, the general public, will start looking for scapegoats. Collective traumas often give rise to conspiracy theories.
In hindsight, collective traumas will often be watersheds of history and signify or initiate times of change in the society affected.
Well known collective traumas include: The John F. Kennedy assassination in the United States, the Estonia disaster in Sweden and various others.
The destruction of the World Trade Center in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack was expected to induce a severe collective trauma in US society. While much of the country, especially around New York were shocked, studies have found that incidents of suicide and depression did not noticeably increase.
Collective traumas have been shown to play a key role in group identity formation (see: Law of Common Fate). During World War II, a US submarine came under several hours of depth charge attack by a Japanese surface vessel until the ship became convinced the submarine had somehow escaped. Psychological studies later showed that crewmen transferred to the submarine were never accepted as part of the team. Later, US naval policy was changed so that after events of such psychological trauma, the crew would be dispersed to new assignments.
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Collective trauma is when a nation or a group of people collectively experience or witness a traumatic event. Even those who do not display signs of physical trauma, may be emotionally traumatized by catastrophic events they witnessed in person or even on television screens far away. Such events can change the mindsets of entire communities, cities, states and even nations. The closer the proximity one is to the event, and the younger (thus more impressionable) the person is, the more likely they are to be affected.
Such examples of contemporary collective traumas would be:
- 9/11
- 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
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