SA reads discussion

Chapters 3-8

While I agree fully that the TRC was necessary, there is something about the process that concerns me.

As a psychiatrist, Im exposed to harrowing accounts pretty much daily. The telling is important, the need to share what happened needs to be acknowledged. Think about how you would share the worst experience of your life. Now think about the expected response. You would want the person hearing to not only acknowledge your pain but to contain it, make it more bearable, help you to cope with it.

All of this takes time. Accounts of events can be piecemeal as someone gains the courage or the trust to share this. Reparation takes time.

Now what happens in a courtroom environment- the account would be rushed, with probably limited empathy. And once told, how is the fallout contained. The pain, shame, unbearableness of what happened can one be accessed by anyone at any point. And what is done to contain, to repair, to heal? Where does that pain go? Does it expand and fill the world? Does it become something that others disregard as sensation- seeking?

How do you move a broken people, a broken country forward if all you do about pain is expose it, but not try to heal it?

The pain is still there, gaining momentum & anger; at some point it spills out to cause destruction.