Abstract
In October 1998, Nelson Mandela described South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission as ‘a pact to uncover the truth, to build a bright future for our children and grandchildren, without regard to race, culture, religion or language’. In the aftermath of man-made trauma, there is inevitably tension between the needs of the individual survivor and those of the community. The notion of ‘restorative justice’ presupposes the capacity of aggressors and their former victims to unite in common purpose, aiming to reconstitute the fabric of a damaged society. This is the focus of discussion in Trauma, truth and reconciliation, which presents a series of essays on the importance of ‘truth’ and ‘reconciliation’ in responding to collective and individual experience of traumatic stress.
This volume, edited by Nancy Nyquist Potter, is one of a number of texts in the International Perspectives of Philosophy And Psychiatry Series, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). Essays by a variety of contributors cover many areas relating to truth and reconciliation after trauma, and provide interesting perspectives on the process. David Brendal's essay describes the potential dialectic between individual psychotherapy with the trauma survivor and the process of truth commissions in a community, while Colleen Murphy's contribution looks at the value of considering how the features of post-traumatic stress disorder can inform our understanding of the effects of political trauma in a society. Many of the essays are philosophically quite dense, and blend moral theories as diverse as those of Hegel and Nietzsche.
The South African experience of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is one of the main foci of the book. Widely perceived as instrumental in the creation of the pluralist modern state of the Republic of South Africa, the TRC is seen as a model for how societies recover from political violence. Several essays call into question aspects of the South African TRC, such as the impact of the cultural and religious world view of its convenor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The African concept of ubuntu, referring to a form of communitarianism manifesting as a collective conception of personhood, was central to the South African TRC. Despite this, ethical questions emerge such as the dilemmas presented by the ‘prescribed forgiveness’ of the TRC process, or the enforced abandonment of rage. Likewise the subtle coercion of survivors into public testimony, in an attempt to generate a collective narrative, also has deleterious effects on the mental health of the individual.
These conceptual challenges to TRC's as universally applicable processes are well articulated in the book and the conceptual limits are well described. One of the book's deficiencies is its failure to study the limitations of TRCs in countries such as Guatemala, Peru and Chile. One of the most interesting counter examples to the South African TRC experience is that of Argentina, whose Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, CONADEP) documented the disappearance of thousands of citizens. What seems to distinguish Argentina's experience of political trauma, is the atmosphere of denial in the broad social context. There are few memorials to ‘the disappeared’ in Buenos Aires, and virtually all of the human rights abusers were pardoned by Argentina's President, Carlos Menem. A meditation upon the Argentine experience would have strengthened the volume's narrative. Similarly, the effect of the ideological struggles over history, upon the psyche of a society could also have been addressed. The proscription of an official process of Indigenous reconciliation in John Howard's Australia could also bear some consideration in such a volume. Similarly, the possible relationship of the shadow of the Holocaust and ambivalence about the apparent excesses of Israeli foreign policy could also have been explored.
While the scope of OUP's “International Perspectives on Philosophy and Psychiatry” series is laudable, the $100 price tag for paperback versions of its volumes appears to be commercial suicide. Nevertheless, this book is partially successful in addressing an area of psychiatry that requires considerable reflection: the balancing of the needs of a community and the individual in the aftermath of traumatic events.
Michael Robertson
Sydney, Australia
© 2007 Michael Robertson