This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told.
Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.Ītrocities, however, refuse to be buried.
“The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness.
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