 PROJECTS
A Psychopolitical Workshop
Third Workshop
Session with South Ossetian Children and joint workshop with Georgians and South Ossetians, November 3, 1998, Tskhinvali, South Ossetia
On November 3, 1998, four Georgians from FDHR and two CSMHI faculty traveled to Tskhinvali. First, the FDHR mental health professionals held a session with South Ossetian children (as planned under their collaborative program), while the South Ossetians and CSMHI observed. Afterwards, CSMHI held a workshop with the Georgian and South Ossetian caregivers. Both sections are described here. While two of the Georgians had participated in previous sessions with the South Ossetian children, for the other two it was the first visit to South Ossetia since the hostilities. This FDHR session with the South Ossetian children was the third in a scheduled series of six to take place between September 1998 and April 1999.
Session with South Ossetian children
When we arrived at the Youth Palace, 25 South Ossetian children, ages 9-12, were gathered in a room, sitting in three concentric circles. Two members of FDHR led the session while the other two Georgians, the two CSMHI faculty, and five South Ossetian teachers and psychologists observed the process. The language used was Russian so that the South Ossetian children and their Georgian group leaders could understand each other.
The first instructor began the meeting by introducing herself and explaining that she and her colleagues had come to the Palace to talk to the children. Noting that she knew some of them already, she said to them, "Don't be shy. Let's introduce ourselves."
She then threw a soft yellow ball about the size of a tennis ball toward the group of children. Whoever caught the ball was to introduce himself or herself and name something he or she liked. Then this child would throw the ball to another who would do the same. The children spoke of liking soccer, music, wrestling, folk dancing and so on. After everyone had had a chance to speak, the instructor introduced a new twist to the game. After catching the ball, each child was to name one "rule" of social behavior in the group. Children identified rules such as smiling in friendship, accepting others' appearance, listening more and speaking less, and being polite.
The interactions became more interesting when the children were asked to make up a story as a group and then to draw pictures. Through these activities, the instructors were creating a canvas onto which the children could project aspects of their internal world. Once out in the open, such projections could then be discussed.
The story that the children created involved someone sailing in a boat to an island where he searches for food. At one point, he sees an Iranian boat and wants to fight the people on board. While there were no references to South Ossetians or Georgians, the CSMHI observers sensed that the children were indirectly expressing feelings about the conflict that had traumatized them. The first picture one of the children drew depicted an island with two trees on it. On the highest point of the island, a stick figure stood shouting, "Help! Help!" There was no explanation as to why the figure was calling for help.
Whenever reference to aggression surfaced, however, most of the children would say something like "Even though it is difficult to make friends after a war, we want peace!" Thus, any expressions of aggression were quickly suppressed. Surprisingly, the instructors made no effort to help the children speak about their aggressive feelings.
The drawings that followed also reflected the children's preoccupation with water, though there were no more figures shouting for help. People in the other drawings were in sailboats traveling to leisure resorts, and the discussion of such vacation spots provoked joy and laughter.
CSMHI Workshop with Georgians and South Ossetians
After observing the session with the South Ossetian children, CSMHI held a workshop with the Georgian and South Ossetian caregivers. Because this workshop followed a clinical session, part of it was didactic and focused on enhancing clinical knowledge and methods for helping the children. At the same time, since this was our first joint workshop with both Georgians and South Ossetians, we sought an opportunity to bring to the surface some of their hesitations and concerns about working with each other.
We noted that in the session we had just observed, the stories and drawings had effectively brought to the surface the children's hidden concerns about the legacy of the trauma. Emotions such as helplessness, anger, and anxiety were revealed in their responses, but they were not explored. Our perception was that if the sessions proceeded in this fashion, the children would continue to act friendly and happy while their unresolved anger and reactions to the trauma raged beneath the surface. Without help to acknowledge and tame their anger and helplessness, these children would become carriers of ethnic enmity, and sustainable peaceful co-existence between the former enemies would remain out of reach.
We hoped that if we could help the Georgian and South Ossetian caretakers to better understand each other's feelings and perceptions, ultimately, they in turn would be able to help the children deal with the Georgian-South Ossetian relationship. By bringing their own feelings and fears out into the open, the caretakers would be better equipped to help the children reveal their previously hidden, "dangerous" feelings.
Our perception of the instructors' own traumatization was confirmed when, during the workshop discussion, one of the Georgian instructors admitted that she was afraid to touch on painful topics such as aggression and helplessness. We asked the South Ossetian psychologists if the children behaved the same way and produced similar stories when the Georgian instructors were not present. They replied that with or without the Georgians present, the children created similar stories, and the South Ossetian instructors too tended to focus on "friendly" scenarios. When we inquired as to what happened to the children's aggressive feelings, one psychologist responded "It is too much for the teachers to talk about painful things, so we do not let the children talk about them either."
Because of these sensitivities and the fact that this was our first joint workshop, CSMHI decided not to plunge directly into discussion of ethnic issues, but rather to focus instead on the clinical issues raised by the children's drawings and stories.
In the first drawing of an island with a figure calling for help, the island might represent South Ossetia, and the stick figure a traumatized child. South Ossetia is indeed geographically isolated, and South Ossetians generally have little opportunity to travel. The stick figure calling for help seemed to be a child's direct expression of helplessness, but there was almost no discussion of this picture during the session, and instant denial of such negative emotions took over.
All the professionals present understood that many of the children's drawings depicting boat trips to fun, peaceful places reflected their desire to escape from painful situations. Since some of the adult caretakers were traumatized themselves, however, they too wished to avoid stirring up painful feelings.
The children's preoccupation with water during this session caught the attention of one of the CSMHI clinicians. South Ossetia has no lakes or seas, yet most of the children's drawings showed water. It was as if water were present everywhere in the room. The clinician asked the caretakers to consider whether the children were trying to send the adults another message. Based on his clinical experience and knowledge of traumatized children, he suggested that the water in the drawings might reflect the symptom of bed-wetting. It has been clinically observed that traumatized children often suffer from this and through dreaming about water they indirectly express their internal dilemma. CSMHI asked the caretakers whether this were a problem with the South Ossetian children.
One of the South Ossetians confirmed that indeed bedwetting was quite common, but rarely spoken of openly because it was humiliating. Many of the mothers had told her that their children dreamt frequently of water and had problems with bed-wetting. Now one could see that perhaps the children's drawings said something about their reaction to the trauma, how it resulted in bed-wetting, but that this was shameful and could not be expressed directly.
Confirmation of this symptom opened a discussion of how to address bed-wetting with the children without humiliating them further. While no immediate solution was found, identifying it as a concern initiated a collaborative discussion among the Georgian and South Ossetian caretakers as to how to tackle it. This sensitivity around the issue of bedwetting illustrates the overlap between the clinical and the psychopolitical. It was evidence that emotionally based symptoms arising from the ethnic trauma are more difficult to face because of the residual trauma and ethnic tensions present in the caregivers themselves.
Another example of the caregivers' personal stories affecting their work was revealed in a private conversation that arose between a young South Ossetian psychologist and one of the CSMHI team, while the general discussion continued around them. Here is her story:
When Tskhinvali was under attack by the Georgians, this young psychologist was still in her teens. Her father had died before the war, and she was living with her mother and her sister. An international organization arrived in Tskhinvali offering to take 40 South Ossetian children and youth away from the war zone and out of harm's way for the duration of the conflict. Representatives of this organization asked the psychologist's mother to choose one of her daughters to be part of the group of 40 and taken to safety. The mother chose the psychologist, and she was taken to another location to live for about four months while her mother and sister remained in Tskhinvali. She was aware of the similarity between her story and William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice. In her case, she was the chosen one.
While she was away, she had no idea what was happening to her mother and sister. When she was brought back to Tskhinvali, she found them alive and unharmed. But while she was in exile, she had developed severe guilt feelings for having been the one who was chosen to be taken to safety. Even after seeing her mother and sister alive, she could not get rid of the guilt. She had internalized these feelings to the degree that she considered herself a "bad" person. She could not talk about her condition with her family members or friends. She said that she also could not allow the children at the Youth Palace to talk about their traumas and memories of the horrible times. Since she was the "chosen one," and spared such trauma, hearing others talk about it would rekindle her guilt feelings and make her feel horrible. (Note: CSMHI was able to help this South Ossetian psychologist therapeutically. Within a year, she blossomed as a professional and even got married.)
During the Tskhinvali workshop, CSMHI noted an "inequality" or disparity between the Georgian and South Ossetian team members. While the Georgians from FDHR had not experienced the war directly, most of the South Ossetians had been in Tskhinvali and lived through bloody fighting and shelling. The facilitator asked them to consider how this difference in their experience of the trauma might affect their interactions as they got to know each other. This led one South Ossetian to comment that, although the South Ossetian caretakers had their government's blessing to collaborate with FDHR, many of their neighbors and friends in Tskhinvali were against the project. The ethnic aggression suppressed among children was far more open among adults, and the caretakers were viewed as "black sheep" or traitors. However, parents knew their children suffered from bed-wetting, depression, nightmares, and inhibitions, and they needed help. As long as the parents understood that this collaboration with the Georgians of FDHR was in the service of helping their children, it appeared that the project would survive.
It was clear that the relationship between these Georgian and South Ossetian caretakers was delicate and that sensitivity would be crucial to maintaining it, yet all of them seemed dedicated to working at it for the sake of the children. After the meeting, at a social reception prepared by the South Ossetians, traditional toasts were made to friendship and peace. The CSMHI observers sensed that both Georgians and South Ossetians were careful in choosing their words so that no one would get hurt.
Insights from Workshop 3
1. Surface collaboration and friendliness between former enemies may hide minefields of hidden emotions.
2. Competition in historical grievances is inevitable. South Ossetians wanted to let CSMHI and the Georgians know that they were more traumatized than the Georgians. There is an inherent inequality between the two groups. South Ossetians had lived through combat and a siege, while the Georgians were more insulated from it.
3. Having others verify one's grief gives self-esteem to the injured party, who can then become more flexible.
4. The facilitators' empathic listening to both sides creates a model of empathy for the two groups to follow vis-à-vis each other.
5. A psychologist's own hidden guilt feelings (for having been luckier than others in the ethnic group) inhibit effectiveness in helping others.
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