The sound of barking dogs: violence and terror among Salvadoran families in the postwar. Med Anthropol Q 2002 Dec;16(4):415-38
Date
12/26/2002Pubmed ID
12500615DOI
10.1525/maq.2002.16.4.415Scopus ID
2-s2.0-0036885726 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 60 CitationsAbstract
This article examines the transgenerational transmission of trauma among campensino living in a rural, repopulated community in El Salvador. Research with Holocaust survivors and their children has shown that traumatic symptoms can be transmitted to children who did not directly experience the Holocaust. The mechanisms by which this transgenerational transmission occurs have not been fully explored and require an expansion of medical and anthropological conceptualizations of posttraumatic illness. Through their reactions to and interpretations of everyday events, campesino parents who lived in the guerrilla camps explicitly transmit trauma to children who did not experience the recent civil war. Illness narratives by sufferers of nervios transmit trauma and point to the basic immorality of the war, an immorality that continues today. In addition, the symptoms of nervios constitute a mechanism by which trauma is implicitly transmitted. Symptoms of nervios point to what generally is not and, indeed, cannot be voiced: the destruction of primary relationships in the family and unresolved grief and helplessness, which, through the responses of family members to the sufferer, are reproduced and reenacted in the present family context.
Author List
Dickson-Gómez JAuthor
Julia Dickson-Gomez PhD Professor in the Institute for Health and Humanity department at Medical College of WisconsinMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AdultAnthropology, Cultural
Child
Disease Susceptibility
El Salvador
Family Health
Humans
Life Change Events
Parent-Child Relations
Parenting
Rural Health
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
Survivors
Violence
War Crimes
