Resilience in Ethnic Experiences with Massive Trauma and Violence

The immediate and long-term effects of massive psychic trauma incurred by various ethnic groups have primarily been studied from a perspective of pathology. It has become almost a given that individuals who experienced persecution and multiple losses suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and continued manifestations of annihilation anxiety such as lack of trust, a tendency to isolation, and a numbing of feelings.

In recent years a new approach has been developed to examine the coping and adaptation of those survivors who indeed appear to have developed productive lives and often intimate relationships. It is an approach that gives us a more balanced view of the survivor.

This issue combines various groups who incurred trauma at different historical periods. Papers will reflect on immediate and long-term coping by survivors and their descendants. The papers include a general overview of a group's adaptation, what social and group forces enhanced the individual struggle to cope, and the cross generational context of adaptation to trauma. Analysis of intrapsychic elements in trauma and coping with trauma are interspersed.

The coping with the effects of the Armenian Genocide is explored through the recollections of 36 aged survivors whose mean age was 88.6 years old. Dr. Shahinian includes in the major coping mechanisms integration of their pretrauma cultural and religious identity, procreation, and achievement. Expectation of positive achievement, and the demand of recognition of the Genocide continues to be the theme for the second generation of