ABSTRACT
We want to conclude with some of the troubling questions with which we started. Can states and societies heal through a therapeutic process like individuals who are traumatized or in mourning? Can we assume that people acting as groups, as collectives, undergo the same process as people acting as individuals? Individually, is it possible for someone to forgive the murderer of one’s parents and/ or grandparents? Especially when these murderers were your neighbors? But as the relation of whole states or among groups within a state, it happens all the time. Every war in history has been eventually followed by a peace. Is achieving democracy really dependent on mass amnesia? Maybe it is too much to ask. People do remember. We have seen that bodies rise from the earth. The dead and the near-dead witnesses are talking, and although everyone wants the prosperity that comes from “moving forward,” this is never the only agenda. Having looked at Argentina, Spain and Eastern Europe, we have come to the conclusion that there is no healing of trauma – only taking the edge off.
