Trauma Theory

The Trauma, Individual and Collective
The concept of trauma driven from ancient Greek, which is meaning 'wound ', in the contemporary the term usually used in medical and psychiatric literature. However, the pain or wound that inflicted upon the mind known as trauma. Ron Eyerman argues that the physical wound cannot be regarded as trauma, because, the trauma is wound that inflicted by emotional shock so powerful that it breaches mind 's experience of time, self and world. The trauma usually appears itself in the dream and flashback, and in this circumstances, the victim became traumatise, the actual trauma itself is not only harmful to the victim, but also it repression of the victim 's memory which brings forth the symptoms (2013.42).

In the following will look at the concept of cultural trauma, Jeffery Alexander, defined cultural trauma that 'when members of collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marked upon their consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways '(2004:1). The cultural trauma usually refers to previously unrelated events, structure, perception and actions. Alexander presents two dimension of cultural trauma. Firstly, the "Lay Trauma Theory", which he argues that traumas are naturally occurring events that crash individuals or collectives sense of well-being, the power that shatters trauma, it is a thinking that appears from events itself, being traumatised is response to that kind of shattering event. Secondly, he discussed the lay trauma theory in term of enlightenment thinking and psychoanalytic version. The enlightenment version signifying that trauma is kind of rational response to abrupt changes. The psychoanalytic version suggested that "places a model of unconscious emotional fears and cognitively distorting mechanisms of psychological defence between the external shattering event and the actor’s internal traumatic response"(2004:5). However, he rejected the idea that the events in and themselves create the collective trauma, events not intrinsically traumatic. "The trauma is socially mediated attribution" (Alexander,

Moreover, Alexander 's criticism that events itself does not automatically qualify as traumatic, in general it is conceivable that the events, such as catastrophic natural disasters, massive population depletion and genocide as traumatic events, for instance, as in, by, and of themselves traumatic. They are nearly certain candidates for trauma; he added that they not qualify automatically, because the trauma is reliant on the 'socio-cultural context of the affected society at the time the historical event or situation arises '. The society who suffers because of the wars, economics repression, internal conflict and politically unstable is more susceptible of trauma compare to those society who do have those issues. The historical events are more probable to be traumatic for the society whom experienced great distressful and maybe is not the case for inexperienced society. For Alexander that the event to be qualified as cultural trauma, first, it must be remembered or made to be remembered. Second, the memory must be made culturally relevant, that is represented as "eliminating, damaging or rendering problematic something scared a value or outlook felt to be essential for the affected society. Finally, the memory must be associated with strong negative effect, usually degust, shame or