When History Is a Nightmare: Lives & Memories of Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina

by Stevan M. Weine

Stevan M. Weine is a psychiatrist who has spent the past six years working with Bosnians. Listening to their testimonies, he's attained a complex, nuanced view of ethnic cleansing that focuses on collective memories of traumatization. He investigates the survivors' attempts to reconcile their remembrances of living together in a cherished multiethnic society with the memories of horrific ethnic atrocities. He explores the Bosnian value of merhamet, meaning forgiveness & charity, central to the experience of living together. He then looks at how Serbian nationalists, such as leaders of Jovan Raskovic & Radovan Karadzic, used memories to promote ethnic hatred & genocide. When History Is a Nightmare concludes by probing Bosnian's efforts, individually & collectively, to face their traumatic memories & struggle toward recovery.
Introduction: Listening to History
1 We All Lived Together
2 Living Through Ethnic Cleansing
3 The Experience of the Bosnian Refugees
Introduction: Psychiatrists Colliding with History
4 Jovan Raskovic's Fall & the Ascendance of Serbian Nationalism
5 Radovan Karadzic & the Metaphors of Terror
6 Psychiatric Apologists & the Denial of Genocide
Introduction: Too Much History
7 Doing Testimony Psychotherapy w/Survivors of Ethnic Cleansing
8 Artists Witnessing Ethnic Cleansing
9 The Bosnian Awakening

Genres: History, Psychology

290 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, as I recall, is about the Serbian war against Bosnia with a decidedly psychological angle, the first president of the successionist Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić, being a psychiatrist himself.