Trauma e culpa nos hibakusha: um estudo da memória de Keiko Ogura

Abstract

The core of this article is a psychological examination of hibakusha testimonies specifically the story of the a-bomb survivor Keiko Ogura. In order to carry out this examination special attention was given to two psychological phenomena that are central in the understanding of these memories: trauma and the feeling of guilt. Trauma will be approached as an excessive experience that left behind traumatic enigmas and thus required an appropriation of the past in both its biographical and historical-political dimensions in an important attempt to give some form and meaning to the incomprehensible event that was lived by survivors. Through that process many hibakusha were taken by the feeling of anguish, which sometimes led them to organize themselves as guilty, a feeling that in most cases gave them an inordinate or distorted sense of responsibility. Both trauma and guilt were central elements in the suffering od survivors, nevertheless, they have also proposed ways of dealing with the atomic event.