Self, Memory, and Socio-Material Context: Connections and Disjunctions
In order to understand spatial trauma implicated in narrative and situational sensational memories, there still are some intriguing questions to be answered. What happens to memory structures when a traumatic event is experienced in childhood? How are self, place, and memory psychologically connected? The entire twentieth century is said to be “the golden era” of (neuro)psychological memory research, even though several still unresolved questions of the functional roles between hippocampal and medial prefrontal cortex and related limbic structures exist (Moscovitch et al.
2005). Several researchers have concluded that the hippocampus (and related limbic structures) has a crucial function in the recalling of experiences (e.g., Moscovitch et al. 2005; Bremner 2008). It connects and integrates different types of memory functions. The hippocampus is the site for episodic (autobiographical) and spatial memory. Spatial memory consists of detailed spatial representations of experienced environments, topographic elements, and elements comprising the environment, such as houses, streets, trees, etc. Episodic memory includes particular autobiographical episodes and events in the individual’s life. It contains information both on the content of the experience and the spatial and temporal context (Moscovitch et al. 2005, pp. 39-40). Bremner and Narayan (1998) have concluded that extreme stress and trauma during childhood can have lasting effects on hippocampal-based learning and memory (also Bremner 2008). Studies also indicate that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during childhood affects mental health and memories in adulthood. Only recent brain imaging techniques have verified that both traumatic stress and PTSD change hippocampal functions and can result in the fragmentation of the episodic memories of childhood and the appearance of intrusive memories, flashbacks, and pathological emotions (Bremner 2008). This partly explains the effacement and fragmentation of the autobiographical memories of war children.These clinical and neurological studies of traumatized children support the findings of several oral history interviews of former war children, which report similar experiences (Kuusisto-Arponen 2009, 2011b). Here the concept of spatial trauma is not a clinical indicator, nor is the aim of this chapter to make any neurological claims. However, strong evidence on psychological research verifies that experiences described by the former war children in their oral narrations actually illustrate the typical changes in recalling memories and the challenges for traumatized children’s emotive-spatial attachment. This conclusion is not enough to explain why certain coping strategies were applied and what effects the forced displacement had on children’s later life. In order to understand the wider picture of wartime forced displacement experiences, social and contextual factors need to be taken into account. Along with Nelson and Fivush (2004, p. 488), it is argued here that “autobiographical memory depends partly on neurological developments necessary for the development of memory and, specifically, episodic memory, but that autobiographical memory emerges from interactive development across social, cognitive and communicative domains to serve the functional goals.” Thus, examination of the existential fractions in relations between self, place, and memory requires a socio-materially and historically contextual approach.
Several contextual factors created the conditions for the development of spatial trauma among British and Finnish war children. First, these children were sent away from their familial social and cultural environment, many traveling unaccompanied without siblings and familial peers. Second, the decision to be sent away was often done without hearing children’s own opinions. Even though mass evacuations of children were necessary in the bombed British cities and the war-torn Finland under the constant threat of Soviet invasion, it was the children who had to bear the reality of being forcefully uprooted several times (leaving home, adjusting to foster homes, returning back home).
Third, the age of war children varied from about 3 to 12 years. The smaller the children, the less developed their language skills were. Experiences of forced displacement were felt bodily and psychologically, but these were not easily narrated. This partial or total lack of narrative and recalling skills, in addition to the traumatic experience of being forcibly displaced, had an enormous impact on children’s autobiographical memories. Nelson and Fivush (2004, pp. 486-489) conclude that autobiographical memory develops gradually across the preschool years. Only through autobiographical memory are times, events, and experiences connected to one another. This requires narrative comprehension and other cognitive skills that many war children did not yet possess because of their young age. The lack of narrated memories does not mean that the experiences would have disappeared, quite the contrary. Forced displacement was mainly experienced bodily and was recorded to situationally accessible memories (SAMs), which include sensory and physiological aspects of experiences (on SAM, see Brewin et al. 1996). Bodily sensations, sounds, smells, and sights are typical SAMs, but these aspects of memories are not voluntarily recalled or easily changed (Brewin et al. 1996). Thus, they often also function as cues when involuntary recalling of traumatic memories or events occurs. Fourth, and this applies exclusively to the Finnish case, war children were sent to other Nordic countries where the Finnish language was not spoken. Finnish children ended up in a completely new linguistic environment where they could not at first understand their caretakers and vice versa. Later, when children learned Swedish, for example, they often (partly or totally) forgot their native language. When they returned home, they again found themselves having to readjust to a different linguistic environment.Based on the wide documentation of geographical and psychological research literature, it is safe to suggest that spatial trauma is a valid concept in analyzing the ties and sights of belonging among the war children. Spatial trauma develops through the traumatic event of being forcibly displaced. This existential event becomes implicated in varying narrative and emotive-spatial experiences. In the next section, this chapter defines three types of socio-spatial coping strategies illustrating spatial trauma among the Finnish and British war children. Empirical data was approached with two analytical questions: How are fragmentations of memory, partial effacement, and involuntary recalling described? How and with what consequences do coping strategies appear in the narratives?
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