LS Borkowski
Release 11, Poland, 26 May 2014
Psychological
Torture in Concentration Camp Poland. The Falsist Dictatorship
Judith
L. Herman in her book Trauma and Recovery (1992) wrote:
A single traumatic event can
occur almost anywhere. Prolonged, repeated trauma, by contrast,
occurs only in circumstances of captivity. [...] repeated trauma
occurs only when the victim is a prisoner, unable to flee, and under
the control of the perpetrator. Such conditions obviously exist in
prisons, concentration camps, and slave labor camps.
and
The methods of establishing
control over another person are based upon the systematic, repetitive
infliction of psychological trauma. They are the organized techniques
of disempowerment and disconnection. Methods of psychological control
are designed to instill terror and helplessness and to destroy the
victim's sense of self in relation to others.
Angela
Ebert and Murray J. Dyck wrote in their article (The
experience of mental death: The core feature of complex posttraumatic
stress disorder, Clinical Psychology Review
24 (2004) 617-635),
The experience of a prolonged
totalitarian control in conjuction with organized violence often
leads to mental death, which is characterized by loss of core beliefs
and values, distrust, and alienation form others, shame and guilt,
and a sense of being permanently damaged. Mental death is a primary
feature of a distinct posttrauma syndrome, complex posttraumatic
stress disorder (PTSD)
and
Mental death
occurs in the context of totalitarian control, which is characterized
by entrapment and wanton harm-doing by people to people. Although
there are many different forms of totalitarian control and each form
is associated with mental death (...), totalitarian control is most
fully and most horrifically exemplified by the experience of torture
