Regressive group dynamics in social trauma: dehumanizing the other

The article explores the issue of group regression in the context of anthropogenic historical trauma. The theoretical considerations of this paper include psychoanalytic approaches to the potential and pattern of group regression in boundary social contexts. Methodologically, the paper represents a qualitative epistemological approach. The corpus of data analyzed consisted of oral history interviews conducted with deported persons from the MSSR, and the method of content analysis through theorizing was used to process and analyze the data. The results presented in the article involve conceptualizations of the phenomenon of dehumanization as a result of group regression. As a result of the research approach, types of stigmatization, archaic mythologies associated with dehumanization and identity dissonance derived from these phenomena were identified and analyzed. Two types of stigmatization are described: official stigmatization, elaborated on the basis of ideological discourse, and unofficial stigmatization, elaborated on the basis of archaic imaginative-fantasmatic material. Particular attention is drawn to the theme of cannibalism identified in the rhetoric of the deportations. The article presents the meanings of cannibalism from a psychoanalytic point of view and analyses the relevance of psychoanalytic conceptions to the deportations in the MSSR.