Il terremoto come catastrofe naturale: trauma e conseguenze psichiche

• Main Author: Marzia Marsili
• Format: Article
• Language: Italian
• Published: Psicologi per i Popoli : Federazione 2015-06-01
• Series: Rivista di Psicologia dell'Emergenza e dell'Assistenza Umanitaria
• Subjects: earthquake; tsunami; earthquake symbols; Mother Earth; earthquake perception
• Online Access: http://www.psicologiperipopoli.it/files/Numero%2015%20Mar.pdf

The impact that natural catastrophic events may have on the human psyche cannot be analyzed only through clinical-diagnostic approaches; in fact, it requires an in-depth analysis into cultural fields (literature, history, anthropology, etc.). How did our ancestors read, name, and interpret these events? Human search for a meaning has used scientific and mythological explanation of earthquake: the punishment of God, the movement of world-bearing animals (Turtle, Elephant, etc.) or Mother Earth mythology. Drawing from history and anthropology, some example are given of the impression of earthquake on human beings, which recall the difficulty of survivors who were buried alive (“i dissepolti”), the absence of rituals for the unburied dead, the longing for an explanation to the un-explainable, and the strategies to make sense of the un-meaningful, and to recover those meaningful places as “meaning structures” destroyed by the catastrophe, preventing thus the risk of dangerous “crisis of presence” with inauspicious consequences.