Faithful Marking: Learning to Observe Collective Pain

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 John 4:35, NRSV; Katherine Wiebe, “Cultivating care,” PhD diss., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, 2012; katherinewiebe.com/blog/dinah-the-samaritan-woman-and-healing-generational-trauma.

2 See Diane Garaventa Myers and David F. Wee, Disaster mental health services: A primer for practitioners (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2005).

3 Eugene T. Gendlin, Focusing: More than meditation or visualization (New York: Everest House, 1978); T.W. Robbins and B.J. Everitt, “Motivation and reward,” in Fundamental neuroscience, ed. Michael Zigmond, Floyd Bloom, Story C. Landis, James L. Roberts, and Larry R. Squire (Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 1999), 1246–1260; K. Lakatos, I. Toth, Z. Nemoda, K. Ney, M. Sasvari-Szedely, and J. Gervai, “Dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) gene polymorphism is associated with attachment disorganization in infants,” Molecular Psychiatry 5 (2000): 633–637, https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4000773. For further evidence for the role of the dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) gene in attachment disorganization see: K. Lakatos, Z. Nemoda, I. Toth, Z. Ronai, K. Ney, and M. Sasvari-Szekely, “Interaction of the exon III 48-bp repeat and the 521 C/T promoter polymorphisms,” Molecular Psychiatry 7 (2002): 27-31. https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4000986. See research review of genetic vulnerability or differential susceptibility in child development: Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg and Marinus H. Van IJzendoorn, “Genetic vulnerability or differential susceptibility in child development: The case of attachment,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 48, no. 12 (2007): 1160-1173; Bernard Stiegler, Taking care of youth and the generations (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 2010).

4 P. Fonagy, “Transgenerational consistencies of attachment: A new theory” (paper presented to the Developmental and Psychoanalytic Discussion Group, APA Meeting, Washington, DC,1999); Donald Roy Catherall, Emotional safety: Viewing couples through the lens of affect (New York: Routledge, 2007); Peter Levine, In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2010); Babette Rothschild, 8 Keys to safe trauma recovery: Take-charge strategies to empower your healing (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010); Stiegler, Taking care of youth; George Bonanno and Charles Burton, “Regulatory flexibility: An individual differences perspective on coping and emotion regulation,” Association for Psychological Science, 8, no. 6 (2013): 591-612, https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691613504116.

5 Levine, In an unspoken voice; Rothschild, 8 Keys; Emily Nagoski, and Amelia Nagoski, Burnout: The secret to unlocking the stress cycle (New York: Ballantine Books, 2019).

6 Levine, In an unspoken voice.

7 Levine, In an unspoken voice.

8 See Kai Erikson, Everything in its path: Destruction of community in the Buffalo Creek flood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005); Jack Saul, Collective trauma, collective healing (New York: Routledge, 2014).

9 See Jamie Doward and Sam Hall, “Therapy saved a refugee child. Fifty years on he’s leading a mental health revolution,” The Guardian, April 27, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/27/peter-fonagy-refugee child-psychologist-anna-freud-centre.

10 Doward, “Therapy saved.”

11 Doward, “Therapy saved.”

12 Saul, Collective trauma, collective healing; Nadine Burke Harris, The deepest well: Healing the long-term effects of childhood adversity (Boston: Houghton Miflin, 2019); Nagoski, Burnout.

13 Erikson, Everything in its path.

14 Erikson, Everything in its path, 187-188.

15 For further explorations of social fragmentation following trauma in biblical accounts see Frank Yamada, Configurations of rape in the Hebrew Bible: A literary analysis of three rape narratives (New York: Peter Lang, 2008).

16 Yamada, Configurations.

17 Fran H. Norris, Matthew J. Friedman, and Patricia J. Watson, “60,000 disaster victims speak: Part II. Summary and implications of the disaster mental health research,” Psychiatry, 65, no. 3 (2002): 240-260, https://doi.org/10.1521/psyc.65.3.240.20169.

18 Norris, “60,000 Disaster Victims.”

19 Saul, Collective trauma, 2.

20 Saul, Collective trauma.

21 John A. Updegraff, Roxane Cohen Silver, and E. Alison Holman, “Searching for and finding meaning in collective trauma: results from a national longitudinal study of the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95, no. 3 (2008): 709-722, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.3.709.

22 Froma Walsh, “Traumatic loss and disasters: Strengthening family and community resiliency,” Family Process 46, no. 2 (2007): 207-227, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17593886/; Updegraff, et al., “Searching for and finding meaning”; Anna Wlodarczyk, Nekane Basabe, Darío Páez, AlbertoAmutio, Felipe E. García, Carlos Reyes, and Loreto Villagrán, “Positive effects of communal coping in the aftermath of collective trauma: The case of the 2010 Chilean earthquake,” European Journal of Education and Psychology 9, no. 1 (2016): 9-19, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejeps.2015.08.001.

23 Cedric C. Johnson, “Resistance is Not Futile: Finding Therapeutic Space between Colonialism and Globalization,” in Healing Wisdom, ed. Kathleen J. Greider, Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, and Felicity Brock Kelcourse (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010); Björn Vickhoff, Helge Malmgren, Rickard Astrom, Gunnar Nyberg, Seth-Reino Ekstrom, Mattias Engwall, Johan Snyyg, Michael Nilsson, Rebecka Jörnsten, “Music structure determines heart rate variability of singers,” Frontiers in Psychology 4 (2013), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00334.

24 See thehearthcommunity.com.

25 See umpquastoryproject.com; thehearthcommunity.com/the-things-that-do-not-burn.

26 Erikson, Everything in its path, 81.

27 Laurie Kraus, David Holyan, and Bruce Wismer, Recovering from Un-natural Disasters: A guide for pastors and congregations after violence and trauma (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2017).

28 Gen 3:9; Gen 16:8; 1 Kings 19:9; John 1:38; and John 5:6.

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Notes on contributors

Katherine Wiebe

Katherine Wiebe, a pastoral psychologist, organizational consultant, and practical theologian, is the founder and former director of the Institute for Collective Trauma and Growth, which provided resources for leaders of groups affected by trauma, crises, or disaster from 2012-2022. See katherinewiebe.com.