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Since October 7, the frequency and intensity of feelings of fear, strong sensations of anxiety, and destabilization have been expressed in sessions with an alarming intensity. These are accompanied by traumatic symptoms tied to both a near and distant past.
“I have this frightening feeling that death is lurking around me,” a patient says, punctuating her speech with long sighs. “It haunts me, chases me everywhere. At night, I wake up suddenly, sweating. No matter how hard I try to forget, as soon as I’m idle, bloody images invade my mind. I jump at the slightest sound. I, along with many friends, am tormented by the constant unanswered question: Will Lebanon face the same fate as Gaza? Death might find me anytime, anywhere. This uncertainty alone is killing… Like many others, I’ve prepared an emergency bag with essentials.”
“Every time I visit a site dedicated to the war in Gaza and see the lifeless bodies of children in their parents’ arms, stained with red and black, I burst into tears. It feels as if a part of me is being murdered,” another patient confides.
“In 2006, I lived near the southern suburbs of Beirut. Hearing the shells fall on Gaza on television, I relived the terror that gripped us all back then. I have older friends who are reminded of the fears they experienced during the civil war. How can I calm my family’s anxieties when I am equally affected?” a third one rhetorically asks.
Another patient remarks, “I cannot bring myself to see all these casualties, all these victims of Israeli bombings. When I speak of it, tears stream down my face. How can the world turn a blind eye to such atrocities?”
“I pretend to lead a ‘normal’ life in front of my family and at work. But the knot in my stomach never leaves. I feel that war could erupt in Lebanon at any moment and I’m unsure how much of me will remain unscathed.” He continues, “Maybe I should stock up on food and medicine…”
“When I witness the atrocities in Gaza, I feel rage, anger, a violence unfamiliar to me. Although I am generally a pacifist, I feel the urge to take up arms and fight to save these children and adults who are helplessly subjected to a murderous frenzy,” another one confesses. After a long pause, he adds, “Perhaps, deep down, it’s my own childhood that needs saving.”
Anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, depression, feelings of powerlessness and sadness, flashbacks of past or recent traumas, questions about an increasingly bleak future— these are just a few of the challenges with which Lebanese men and women must grapple — challenges that have sadly become all too familiar.
Indeed, this traumatogenic environment is not new. For far too long, Lebanese people have felt left to their own devices, without a safety net, forsaken by corrupt officials, schemers, blinded fanatics and depraved politicians. The grim current situation further amplifies feelings of helpless resignation in the face of arbitrary political, economic, cultural or social decisions that directly impact their fate and that of their loved ones.
Some still find ways to ward off anxiety, like the man who says he now spends much more time reading local and international political analyses about the war, as if to exorcise his fears, hoping to have some control over his destiny and that of his family.
Others admit they are in a state of denial. “I don’t want to think about it,” a young woman says. “I want to live day by day, otherwise I’ll collapse, and so will those around me.”
“I don’t want to change anything about my life. I strive to remain active,” another says. “That’s how I maintain some semblance of balance, even though I feel its fragility.”
“I refuse to accept that barbarity and evil will triumph,” declares a young woman, tears in her eyes. “Sometimes I lose hope in life when I hear public or private statements of unspeakable cruelty. But I push back: even if I’m the only one who believes in this. I want to continue fighting against injustice, for my beliefs and the values I hold dear. I want to declare that wars and massacres are never the solution to conflicts between peoples, just as they aren’t between individuals. Peace can only reign when everyone’s rights are recognized and protected.”
In 1915, S. Freud wrote, “The emphasis on the commandment: ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ gives us assurance that we are descended from an endlessly long line of murderers, who had a taste for murder in their blood, as perhaps we do ourselves.”
This latent murderer or barbarian in the subconscious of every human is capable of far more cruelty than any animal because they revel in murder and spilled blood. Freud believed that through culture and its civilizing work, progress could be made: violent and destructive drives could be sublimated into cultural productions, thus promoting a somewhat peaceful coexistence marked by tolerance and empathy among humans.
Anticipating the devastation of World War II, Freud subsequently became more pessimistic about the success of this civilizing process. He wrote in 1939, “We live in a particularly curious time. We are surprised to find that progress has struck a pact with barbarism.” Because any war, in its essence, is barbaric. It destroys human progress through the encouraged pulsional regression and can only result in individual and collective misery. He further commented, “A citizen of a cultured world can find themselves lost in a world that has become foreign to them — with their greater homeland in ruins, shared resources ravaged, and fellow citizens divided and debased.”
Freud’s reflections led him to draw a critical distinction: the civilizing work confronts what he calls “cultural hypocrisy.” He explains that there are two types of humans. Those truly transformed by culture, internalizing its civilizing and communal values which they then embody in their daily lives, and those for whom culture acts as a mere external veneer, without any internal transformation of their destructive impulses. In other words, this latter category fails to evolve by channeling their destructive drives into altruistic or convivial impulses. These individuals exist in a sort of cultural facade, acting primarily out of self-interest or out of fear and submission to those with more power.
Undoubtedly, those currently in power in Lebanon, intoxicated by their delusions of grandeur and impunity, or those now leading Israel, Gaza, or elsewhere, belong to this latter category. The statements of Western leaders, from their lofty positions, denying any humanitarian truce to the beleaguered Palestinians and cynically practicing a double standard, can also be classified among this group.
We currently stand really far from the profound declaration of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who wrote, “We suffer from an incurable disease called hope. Hope for liberation and independence. Hope for a normal life where we are neither heroes nor victims. Hope to see our children walk to school without danger. Hope for a pregnant woman to give birth to a living baby in a hospital, not a dead child at a military checkpoint. Hope that our poets will see red in roses rather than in blood.”
