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Scar Tissue. Visible and Invisible Traces of Boundaries and Wounds

2022; Springer International Publishing; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-031-14608-4_12

2661-8192

Ada Piselli,

Human Behavior and Motivation

Hurts very often leave signs. These signs can be more or less visible. They can be both physical and psychological. We usually call them “scars”. In English, “scar formation” and “healing” are synonyms. In medicine, the formation of scars depends on the conditions of the tissue, on the whole person hurt and on environmental factors. Hurts can involve just one individual or a group of people (a family, a community, even a whole nation). So, we can find scars on single bodies (skin, bones, organs) and on buildings, public spaces, cities. Visible scars can be hidden (with shame or decency) or shown (with pride or display). Time is obviously involved as well. Scars are the visible traces that something painful happened, so they are a physical kind of memory. And we can assume that all of this is true also in the psychological process of healing, both for individuals and for communities. Scars can become a boundary, physically and metaphorically, between past and future, between me and not-me, between victim and perpetrator. The way we deal with our seams tells about ourselves as well as about the hurt that caused it and as about the environment we live in. Environment, intended both in its physical and in its relational qualities, can help and encourage the process of healing, with conscious action or just with a supportive and enduring emotional mood. But it can also slow and even hinder this process, with and impatient and hostile emotional mood. Sometimes one’s process of healing collides with another’s will to forget or even erase hurts or uncomfortable, painful memories. These are quite familiar situations for a psychotherapist, as we meet them in many of the stories of our patients. All these can become useful lenses for watching through scars in cities and public spaces, when both hurts and scars involve whole communities.