Lost Chances and Prosperous Present? The Traumatic Past and Estonian Life Today

Abstract

The author attempts to understand how traumatic experiences during the past century in Estonia have changed the beliefs and memories of Estonian people and how those changes might influence quality of life in the present time. The historical background of the traumatic past, the consequences of trauma, transgenerational transmission of trauma, difficulties in communicating about traumatic experiences, and recovery from trauma are discussed. The author analyzes clinical material from psychoanalytical work in the last 2 years, in which patients’ psychic problems were connected with past traumatic experiences, and presents a short vignette relevant to his position.

Acknowledgments

The author is thankful to his Dutch colleague, psychoanalyst Ans Van Blokland, for her support and help in writing this article.

Notes

Destruction battalions were special units of the Soviet army created for destruction of all material and human resources (prisoners, for example) before the Soviet army left and the German army took over.

Voluntary self-defense units were organized during the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet army and after its retreat for protection of material recourses and people and for restoring the Estonian Republic after the occupation.

The Forest brothers were Estonian partisans, people with different aims, who hid in woods for many reasons, mainly hiding from the Soviet terror or fighting actively against the Soviet order.

This book and the movie are both about people who went through hopeful spring in 1968 in Prague.

Golodomor refers to famine or/and starvation during 1932 and 1933 (as well as earlier and later) that was created intentionally by the totalitarian Stalin regime in which millions of Ukrainian people died.

The good internal object is part of object (usually mother) internalized in childhood; a mental representation which mediates and supports the relationship between self and environment.

This involves an “increasing rate of thinking and dreaming about events [and] changes in crime, suicide, physical health, and even prosocial behavior change” (Pennebaker & Banasik, 1997, p. 17).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ants Parktal

Ants Parktal is a psychoanalyst in a private practice and guest lecturer at Tallinn University and Tartu University. He graduated from Tartu University in 1982, and received his master degree in clinical psychology from San Francisco Professional School of Psychology in 1993. He was accepted as psychoanalyst and direct member of IPA 2007. His research interests focus on psychoanalysis and politics, including influence of past traumas on present psychic world and behavior.