Psychosocial Trauma in Chili

Today I’m going to talk about Psychosocial Trauma in Chili.

In our country for nearly 17 years human rights were violated by military regimen of Augusto Pinochet. Those violations marked forever the history of our country.

Many people during the military regime were persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, disappeared and dead. Today their families suffer the consequences of these atrocities. They are a traumatized population. From psychology, can say that this population suffers a” psychosocial trauma”.

Trauma is a term that used to refer to injuries that leave an effect relatively permanent, a wound that leaves a mark. En psychology it used to refer to experiences that mark a person, leave a residue permanent that is not good for her/his.
Psychosocial trauma is a term proposed by Ignacio Martin Baró and refers to a historical process that may have left an entire population affected, the traumatized, in the sense that social relations are disrupted, which is expressed in psychosocial processes that tend to the establishment of distrust, rigidity, skepticism and violence as a means of conflict resolution.

This is the case of many Chileans who suffered violence political from the State.

There are two aspects important in psychosocial trauma: first, the injury that affects every person has been produced in whole or socially, so their roots are not in a single individual but in their society, and second, that their livelihood is found in relationship between individual and society through various institutional mediation, group and even individual.
Ignacio Martin Baró proposes three axes from which you can learn symptoms or causes of psychosocial trauma in a society: violence, social polarization and institutional lie. These three axes you can found it in our society and contribute to prolonging psychological trauma.
If you want to know more about psychological trauma I invite you to attend classes on Friday morning. Greetings!

My Favorite Photograph

Today I’m going to talk about my favorite photograph

This photograph was taked by my sister in December of 2002. The boy that appears there is my nephew; his name is “Darian”.

He is 13 years old, is my first and unique nephew, I don’t have others nephews or nieces. When he was born I was in the same hospital because I was sick. I remember that day very well.
I was to come out of hospital and my brother arrives and he hugs me and tells me: “He was born” whit his brown eyes filled of tears. It was a very special moment because I never saw my brother so happy.
My nephew is a very special person to me, because when he was a baby, I was at school and my mom took care of him in the afternoons. When I came back from school, he was always sleeping, and sometimes I woke him up just to play with him. Also, I prepared his milk and I changed his nappies too.
I remember that one day I entered to my house and he was hiding under the table. I did not see him, but he yelled: "Fantita Fresia". This is how he call me in my home. It was so fun, because he comes out from under table and he hugs me. In this picture he was just five years old. It's funny because when he was a child, he loved posing for the camera, now that is a teenager he doesn’t like photographs. I think it's something he learned in my family, none of my brothers likes to posing for the camera, me neither.
I love my nephew, although he is a teenager, I still see him as a child.

Michel Foucault

I think a very important person for psychology’s field is Michel Foucault, he is not a psychologist but he developed significant contributions considered and used by social psychology, especially in its most critical current and legal psychology. Michel Foucault was a french philosopher, historian, critic and sociologist.

He held a chair at the Collège de France with the title “History of Systems of Thought", and also taught at the University of California, Berkeley. Foucault is best known for his critical studies of social institutions, most notably psychiatry, medicine, the human sciences, and the prison system, as well as for his work on the history of human sexuality. Foucault's work on power, and the relationships between power, knowledge, and discourse has been widely discussed. In the 1960s Foucault was often associated with the structuralist movement. Foucault later distanced himself from structuralism. While Foucault was always typically characterized by the post-structuralist and postmodernist labels, he personally rejected the postmodernist and post-structuralist labels, preferring to classify his thought as a critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant.

Although Foucault is not defined as a psychologist I consider him the best in thinking about power relations in various fields, and whose principles have been widely used by social psychology in general. I like Foucault because he proposed a new way of understanding knowledge, subjectivity and social structure among others.
I hope you like learning more about him, greetings!

The Godfather

Hello, I’m going to talk about my favorite film.

My favorite film is “The Godfather”. These are a series of films directed by Francis Ford Coppola. These are based on the book of the same name wroted by Mario Puzzo. Eventhough I love the whole “Godfather saga” ,my favorite is the second part, and I will talk about this one.

The film relates two parallels plots in different times. The main plot is the continuation of the first film, and tells us about Corleone family in the 50’s and the life of the younger godfather´s son -Michael Corleone- as “Don”. The second plot is a flashback that tells us about Vito Corleone, Michael´s father, and his life in Italy and USA before he will be the godfather. I like so much the flashbacks even though the principal history is very entertaining too.

I love this film because tells how Vito Corleone become a “Don”. He was a kid when his father is murdered in Sicily, by a capo of Mafia called Don Ciccio. His name in Italy was Vito Andollini but when he arrived to USA, his last name was changes by Corleone due to an error. Corleone was the village where he lived.

Vito grows in "little Italy" in New York early twentieth century. Film doesn’t shows the growth of Vito Corleone, only shows when he arrived to USA and shows when Vito got married and knowns his friend, Clemenza , and how they enter to the world of the Mafia.

The three films are great but I recommend to watch this one because is top, even though read the book is even better.

My Cell phone

My favourite piece of technology is my cell phone. I bought it in December of last year, it was my Christmas present. My cell phone is nokia brand, it is simple and compact, easily falls into my pocket.

I use my cell phone every day to talk to my parents, my brothers and sister, my friends, etc. Also I use it for to listen music, my phone does not have much memory to stores songs, but if it has radio. So when I get bored of listening to music that I have on my mp3, I listen to radio cell phone.

Other use that I give to my cell phone is a wake-up. I program every day to awaken, the truth is that without cell phone I think that I would not be able to wake up every day early.

I love my cell phone because it is lightweight and fits in anywhere. It has a long battery life and also I can connect to internet. Another thing I love about my cell phone is that when I listen to the radio I can record songs, what I do is to record parts of songs that I like, and then I use those parts of the songs as ringtones.

My cell phone is not very technological, but for me is fine, and my life would be a bit more difficult without the cell phone alarm, but I think I could live without it.

Grunge Music!

Hello, I'm going to talk about grunge.
Grunge is a movement musical that started in Seattle at the end of 80’ with bands from state of Washington in USA.
It is believed that term comes from a relaxed pronunciation of adjective “grungy”. That term usually use in USA to refer to dirty.
It’s considered a subgenre of rock and too is called “Sound of Seattle” or “Seattle Scene”. The first company that promoted and gave to know this genre it was “Sub Pop”. The company supported the first bands like as Green River, Soundgarden and Nirvana.
Grunge like genre musical is characterized for distorted guitars, repetitive melodies and heavy battery.
The letters of songs of grunge bands distinguished by their disenchantment and apathy, and by discuss topics like as alienation, search of freedom or social marginalization. Across those letters of songs, the musicians show his disagreement with society. But not all the songs express disagreement, too there are songs about love, humor, etc.
Grunge music was expanded around the world during first decade of 90’, driven by the success commercial of albums “Nevermind” of Nirvana and “Ten” of Pearl Jam.
The most famous bands were Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains. Today still doing music only Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, Stone Temple Pilots and The Melvins. Soundgarden decided to meet this year and have made some presentations.

I hope that Soundgarden made a world tour and come to Chili.

Vittorio Guidano: my master en psychology

Vittorio Guidano (1944-1999) was born in Italy. He is founder of post-rationalism. He studied medicine in University of Rome and then he specialized in neuropsychiatry in University of Pisa.
His work can be separated en two phases. The first phase begins in 1975 where he sought to extend traditional association empiricist epistemological perspective through an elaboration of a psychology of self. He came to notion of personal identity as a hierarchy of knowledge, emotions, perception and memory as a true and proper structural theory of the self and the world conscious.
The second phase in 80’s, he publishes “Cognitive Processes and Emotional Disorders”, in which he tried to develop a model of dynamic development of self in line with epistemological revision carried forward. Progressive integration of organization of knowledge of self and world, which takes place during various phases of “development”, and active process of a “conduit” through relational relations, which define evolutionary context, building a personal identity in terms of uniqueness and continuity.
I like what V. Guidano proposes, because it moves from a descriptive psychopathology to evolutive and procedural psychopathology and because he developed psychotherapeutic intervention strategies more focused on the reconstruction and reorganization of patterns of personal meaning.