Contents

1 Introduction................................................................................................................................... 288

2 Trauma and Liberation Psychology..............................................................................................

3 From National Liberation to Personal Empowerment................................................................... 293

4 The Traumas of Trauma Relief...................................................................................................... 296

5 Resiliency as the Capacity to Resist.............................................................................................. 300

6 Conclusion..................................................................................................................................... 302

References............................................................................................................................................ 304

Abstract

The collective nature of violence requires a reassessment of the prevailing biomedical model of individual trauma that guides conventional psychiatric responses to such events. Perspectives are needed that take into account chil­dren's embeddedness within families, communities, and historical and political narratives. This also means questioning the assumption that children are inno­cent victims in need of care, as opposed to political actors in their own right, as well as the assumption that children alone are vulnerable to dehumanizing violence. This chapter works through the case of Palestine to highlight emerging interdisciplinary literature about the collective and political nature of trauma and violence. Secondly, this chapter seeks to bring a critical psychology perspective to bear on the extensive literature on child psychology in conflict zones, includ­ing Palestine.

D.J. Marshall (*)

School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA e-mail: djmarshall@email.arizona.edu

C. Sousa

Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr, PA, USA e-mail: csousa@brynmawr.edu

© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017

C. Harker et al. (eds.), Conflict, Violence and Peace, Geographies of Children and

YoungPeople 11, DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-038-4_7 trauma looks like, not just from the perspective of children, but “from the perspective of the oppressed.” By giving attention to the other ways of under­standing trauma and doing trauma relief, offered by Palestinian psychologists, community workers, teachers, parents, and young people, this chapter seeks to highlight and build upon nascent attempts at developing postcolonial approaches to children’s geography.

Keywords

Trauma • Political violence • Liberation psychology • Postcolonial theory • Palestine

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