ABSTRACT
Beyond individual and family trauma, more and more people are exposed to social trauma, more specifically, to war trauma. This chapter discusses some of the consequences of possible exposition of the loss of a secure base; death of loved one; loss of a body part or vital body function(s); loss of ethical integrity; loss of property; possible loss of intimately important objects, souvenirs, or memorials (for children, also of transitional objects); loss of self-respect, professional, or ethnic identity; and loss of language and cultural history. The text is based on psychoanalytic theories of social trauma, as well as on experiences of a psychologist working with the victims of wars in the former Yugoslavia and empirical psychological studies of war veterans.
