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The explosion that shook Beirut on August 4, 2020, the recent earthquakes in Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon, as well as any sudden and brutal traumatic event that occurs are felt by each individual according to their conscious and unconscious personal history, as they provoke reactions that are equally unique. More often than not, these reactions fail to adhere to the logical frameworks of thought or to the frameworks that we deem to be logical and that organize our relationships with ourselves and with others. It is in these situations that irrational behaviors and representations emerge and come as an incomprehensible surprise to individuals. This may also occur, for example, in the case of the death of a loved one, or when someone emerges unscathed from an accident or survives a terrorist attack while others perish.
What may be common to all these situations is the emergence of a strong sense of guilt expressed as a nagging reproach: “Why them and not me?” A few examples: This is the story of two Lebanese men who, fleeing the precariousness they grappled with in their country, decided to try their luck in Turkey. One of them greatly insisted on convincing the other to accompany him. That person did not survive the earthquake, while his friend did: consumed by guilt, the survivor feels responsible for his friend’s death.
A young foreigner, accompanied by members of his family, had settled in Turkey. During the earthquake, the building in which they lived collapsed. He was rescued and initially felt happy to be alive. However, when he learned that members of his family were among the victims, he was left with an intense feeling of guilt: while he was initially relieved to have escaped death, it now seemed unbearable to be alive while his loved ones were not.
During the August 4, 2020 explosion that hit the seaport of Beirut, a lady living miles away from the site of the explosion watched videos on television revealing the extent of the tragedy: the destruction, the dead, and the bloodied victims. In a way that seemed inexplicable to her, she found herself beset by a litany of obsessive reproaches: “I could have contributed to providing aid to the victims. I should have offered them my support instead of just watching from afar…”
Shortly after the Lebanese civil war, former combatants recounted having been left with a strong sense of guilt. They blamed themselves for failing to save their comrades, and they had equally accusatory thoughts related to the torture of prisoners — some of whom were tortured to death — to the killings they took part in, to the innocent individuals injured or killed by the bombings they carried out, and to the terrorist attacks they were involved in, among other things.
You might have witnessed many other more or less similar situations, or have found yourself in one or the other. These reactions occur in the aftermath of a dramatic and entirely unexpected event that triggers in an individual a range of feelings, thoughts or reactions.
This is called known as the survivor’s guilt syndrome. It is characterized by the development of haunting thoughts related to the tragedy: one feels guilty and troubled for being alive. They feel ashamed and lost in rumination. This syndrome provokes agitation, disrupts sleep, causes nightmares, induces irritability, and results in a lack of motivation. For some, the remorse and pain are so intense that their daily life is affected, particularly for those who have experienced a shock caused by a violent psychic intrusion of a traumatic event, knowing once again that these symptoms cannot be generalized to everyone. The haunting question “Why them and not me?” lingers. Confronted with a set of complex states often incomprehensible to their understanding, they attempt to find a more or less logical meaning, but the answers found or provided by their surroundings seem insufficiently convincing to bring any appeasement, especially if this interrogation clashes with their incomprehension.
The guilt felt by a survivor often stems from an identification with deceased or injured victims, articulated to unbearable representations of the ordeal they imagine the victims must have endured. The survivor also identifies with those who were present at the scene of the tragedy and imagines the anxiety they must have experienced, particularly those who were there moments before and of whom the survivor was or could have been part. Others experience the resurgence of previous feelings of guilt experienced in situations where they blamed themselves for not intervening to save, help, or relieve people in need, thus reactivating repressed conflicts that they believed had been overcome.
For psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, trauma is present from the outset in an individual, as subsequent traumas reactivate primary feelings of anxiety and danger, as well as those of the initial collapse, the traces of which their unconscious memory has retained. Survivors are afflicted with a set of disturbances that hinder the course of their existence.
Paradoxically, guilt can have a fertile function: it prompts an individual to question the causes, not only external but also intrapsychic, of this feeling and relate it to their own history. It pushes them to be active and undertake initiatives to react, for example, more effectively in the event of a new tragedy or to activate their vital forces by launching concrete private or collective actions with the aim of challenging, reforming, changing, or improving. Perhaps also in the secret hope of redeeming themselves.
The feeling of guilt, accompanied by a range of emotionally disruptive states, is part of what is called the mourning process. This process varies in duration for each individual, contrary to certain conceptions that turn out to be limiting either chronologically or quantitatively. It is twofold: on the one hand, it involves giving oneself the time needed to metabolize the painful confrontation with the new reality related to the definitive absence of a person with whom attachment bonds had been formed, and on the other hand, it requires engagement in the necessary and complex intrapsychic work of accepting a loss. Differently put, it requires renouncing the substitute sources of satisfaction that were derived from the relationship with the deceased person. This feeling can be accompanied by thoughts about one’s own death or the remembrance of past bereavement, reactivating ambivalent thoughts or experiences.
The role of one’s support system, as with any traumatic shock, during this period is crucial when it comes to accompanying the individual. It should manifest itself through patient support and authentic understanding of their experience. The empathetic listening of loved ones and their encouragement to allow free expression of their torment, both verbally and non-verbally, provides much-needed comfort. One should avoid pitying or commiserating gazes, as well as clumsy or impatient behaviors that lead some to say: “Come on, pull yourself together! Thank God you’re not among the victims! Forget it, all of this will pass. Life goes on!” and other clichés of the sort. This type of encouragement only serves to exacerbate their discomfort and intensify their withdrawal into themselves.
As we have already seen with traumatized individuals, participation in a support group led by professionals, comprised of people who have experienced the same suffering, and conducted in an atmosphere of mutual trust, solidarity, respect, freedom of expression, and attentive listening, also fosters internal psychic reconstruction.
If these resources prove absent or insufficient, perhaps because the memory traces of past traumas or feelings of guilt experience an unbearable resurgence, then resorting to psychoanalytic therapy will become indispensable, and may eventually lead to the return of an unspeakable subjective truth to consciousness.
Most recently, the repeated seismic tremors in Lebanon caused a general state of panic among the population. If some individuals deem these reactions to be irrational or senseless, it is because they are in denial of the traumatic resurgences rooted in the unconscious of each person, resurfacing with each unexpected and violating event.
These fears are not surprising if one admits that the psyche of citizens is precarious, exhausted by the deleterious conditions of their existence for many years. One can only demonstrate understanding and solidarity in the face of these anguished behaviors, all the more anxious and widespread because the Lebanese know all too well that they can expect, at best, deceitful words and a falsely compassionate attitude from the ruling clique and the psychopathic, rotten-to-the-core power, responsible for the planned death of the Lebanese cultural identity.
