'Soos 'n vuil hond het ek gevoel : shame narratives in South African survivors of chronic trauma

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Both chronic trauma and shame, as well as the relation between them, are understudied phenomena. This is despite particularly high levels of both trauma- and shame-related psychopathology in South Africa (Edwards, 2005). I conducted a qualitative study exploring experiences of trauma, shame, post-traumatic reactions and coping mechanisms in single interviews with 19 South African survivors of chronic trauma (intimate partner violence) using narrative analysis. Results from the categorical content analysis indicated that all but one participant reported a history of physical violence perpetrated by her intimate partner. Sexual and emotional violence were also reported by the majority of the participants. The most significant reported mental health outcomes were persistent fear, depression and suicidality, dissociation and somatic complaints. Coping mechanisms included religion, support from family, counselling and substance misuse. Using smiling as a mask to conceal difficult feelings and keeping occupied were cited as the most effective defenses. Shame was viewed as a social emotion, and often described as humiliation (and sometimes embarrassment), which required the presence of a mocking, hostile audience. This was interpreted in socio-cultural terms. Eleven women presented with a split self – the authentic self who admitted to a great deal of shame when asked indirectly, and the false self who was described in surprisingly positive terms. I analysed this split using categorical content analysis and narrative analysis from a social constructivist point of view at individual (clinical) level, organisational (micro-cultural) level, and broader cultural level. I used Gee's (1991) categorical form analysis to analyse five long complex shame and trauma narratives with the aim of determining if psychic fragmentation presents at linguistic level. I also analysed three short, compressed trauma and shame narratives. The structure of the short narratives tended to be circular, erratic, disjointed, and interrupted (Scarry, 1985; Simon, 2008). The three short, compressed trauma narratives were characterised by long pauses or silences, hesitations, avoiding eye contact, hunching over, covering the face with clothes, whispering, so making the narrative almost inaudible, crying, and defensive leaning in towards me, and laughing. These women were exceptions – most women expressed an urgency to talk about their experiences in great detail. Although the longer narratives are essentially fractured chaos narratives at linguistic level, they contain predominant trauma- and shame-related themes that are consistent throughout the narratives and that remain intact in spite of the signs of linguistic disruption and fragmentation. They are, in order of narratives, 1) shame/self-blame and deservedness; 2) truth/lies and bearing witness; 3) shame, humiliation and dissociation; 4) the concealed, shame-based self, including amnesiac-like disorientation of place and time; and 5) patterns of cyclical leave-return reflecting perpetrator-instilled abandonment terror, including disorientation of time. I have argued that although language, or narrative structure, continues to mimic and reflect narrative content (fractured narratives vs fractured selves) – there is also the intriguing possibility of a disconnection between form and content; and that thematic coherence or consistency and narrative fracturing can co-occur; co-exist. There are a number of clinical features in the narratives which are either related to, or comprise diagnostic criteria for chronic trauma syndromes such as chronic PTSD and DESNOS, and intersect with shame themes in the narratives I analysed. Consequently, I argue that there is a substantial intersection or co-occurrence between exposure to chronic trauma, and trauma-related clinical symptoms, including shame, which emerge from the narratives, which without exception, demonstrate significant linguistic fracturing. In conclusion, a number of gaps in the literature were identified. Future research should triangulate methods and chronic trauma prevalence and longitudinal studies are needed both internationally and locally.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University