1 / f . '• ,'^jpa* Conseg uences :d *! IE'l^ of Denial I *>\& V vi ( ; The Armenian Genocide ■ * Aida Alayarian KARNAC I 5 : < 1 ■. 1 ! ! CONSEQUENCES OF DENIAL THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE Aida Alayarian KARNAC First published in 2008 by Kamac Books Ltd 118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT Copyright © 2008 Aida Alayarian The right of Aida Alayarian to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-13: 978 1 85575 565 9 Edited, designed and produced by The Studio Publishing Services Ltd www.publishingservicesuk.co.uk e-mail: [email protected] 10 98765432 1 www.kamacbooks.com CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vn ABOUT THE AUTHOR ix FOREWORD: A FORTUITOUS MEETING by Micol Ascoli Xlll FOREWORD: RECOGNIZING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE by Caroline (Baroness) Cox XVII PREFACE by Hil&ne Piralian-Simonyan XXI INTRODUCTION XXV PART I: THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND TRAUMA 1 CHAPTER ONE History of the Armenian genocide to the present day 3 CHAPTER TWO Silence, denial, and trauma 29 CHAPTER THREE Trauma in relation to historical genocide 43 v Vi CONTENTS PART II: THE IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO GENOCIDAL VIOLENCE 57 CHAPTER FOUR Psychoanalytic perspectives on the causes and effects of genocide 59 CHAPTER FIVE Twentieth-century genocide: brief examples from history 97 CHAPTER SIX Psychological consequences for those who survived 113 CHAPTER SEVEN Anger with no end: the tragic consequences of denial 125 CHAPTER EIGHT Conclusion: moving towards healing and recovery 141 APPENDIX I: Maps of 1915 Armenian genocide 157 APPENDIX 11: United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 161 APPENDIX 111: Article 301 167 APPENDIX IV: Previous, recent, and current involvement in the question of the Armenian genocide by world leaders, significant figures, and the media 169 APPENDIX V: Turkish quotes about the Armenian genocide 181 REFERENCES 183 INDEX 193 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In my career I have been extremely fortunate to work with many colleagues who helped me to gain knowledge and to form my ideas and ways of thinking. These specifically include many supervisors, supervisees, and, indeed, my analysts, to whom I am very grateful. Some chapters of this work were originally presented as a paper titled "Psychological consequences of not acknowledging Armenian Genocide" at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the World Psychiatric Association—Transcultural Psychiatric Section—in cooperation with the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture,inthe Medical University of Vienna. I therefore wish first and foremost to express my gratitude to all those colleagues who invited me and provided me with a platform allowing me to raise this issue. I specifically would like to express my deep gratitude to Dr Micol Ascoli, because the very existence of this book originates from a dis­ cussion I had with her. In 2005,1 was presenting at the International Society for the Psychological Treatments of the Schizophrenias and Other Psychoses (ISPS) in London a case of a refugee patient with psychotic symptoms that we were working with at the Refugee Therapy Centre. In the tea-break, Micol and I were sitting at the same table. She said that she enjoyed the presentation and we got talking. vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I found out that she is from a half-Jewish background and when she discovered that I am half-Armenian we got on to the topic of the genocide. I expressed my personal view that if people in the inter­ national community had stood up and acknowledged the Armenian genocide, then the Holocaust and many other instances of genocide may never have happened. Micol was interested in this idea and spontaneously invited me to present something on this topic at a Conference in Vienna where she was presenting a symposium. Although I was flattered by her invitation, I was also surprised, because I had simply been talking to her about my feelings regard­ ing genocide. I was very aware that my knowledge of the Armenian genocide was rather sparse. So, I expressed my gratitude to Micol and told her that I did not have the authority and the required know­ ledge to speak on this subject. None the less, she encouraged me to do it and asked me to think about it. She told me she was going to talk about Primo Levi—his depression and his consequent suicide and its relation to the Holocaust. This was something that is of great interest to me, so I promised her that I would think about it seriously. We communicated for two months prior to the conference, and dur­ ing this time I started to research the Armenian genocide. It was at this point that I realized that there is nothing written about the psy­ chological consequences of not acknowledging the Armenian geno­ cide, and so I dared to set myself the task of trying to say something about it. Therefore, I informed Micol that I was accepting her invita­ tion to present in Vienna, and that I am specifically interested in, and would focus on, the psychological elements of the Armenian geno­ cide. I would also like to thank Dr John Denford for reading my ini­ tial paper and for his feedback. He wrote to me saying that he thought it was a very good and, indeed, important topic and that I ought to make it publishable. He suggested that I should either cut it down to publish in a journal, or continue working on it to turn it into a book. I left that idea for a while, but soon enough I found myself studying and researching the topic further. I talked to Oliver Rathbone at Kamac as to whether he would consider publishing the book, sent him an abstract, and he kindly accepted it. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Ara Sarafian, from the Gomidas Institute in London, who initially so generously gave me information about books, websites, and other sources for my ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix research. Details of the study Dr Sarafian is engaged on can be found in Appendix IV. I am also very grateful to Dr H£l£ne Piralian-Simonyan, a psycho­ analyst in Paris who wrote about the psychoanalytic consequences of genocide denial (see Piralian-Simonyan, 1994, 2008). She sent me the English version of her article, which is the analysis of a story writ­ ten by Denis Donikian, a second-generation Armenian writer, and kindly gave me permission to use it.1 I also want to thank Dr Rouben Adalian from the Armenian National Institute (ANI), which is a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, dedicated to the study, research, and affirma­ tion of the Armenian genocide, for his kind permission to use the resources on their website (www.armenian-genocide.org). Thanks are also due to www.genocidel915.info for their resources. They were both very comprehensive in comparison to many others that I came across and have helped greatly with the historical back­ ground. I am extremely grateful to them. Finally, I am grateful to everyone at the Refugee Therapy Centre, my place of work, who provided me with help and support in the process of writing this book. Note 1. Two of Dr Piralian-Simonyan's articles in English can be found on http://www.crda-france.org/Oen/aunconscious/piralianl.htm and http: / / www.crda-france.org / Oen / aunconscious / piralianOl .htm A ABOUT THE AUTHOR Aida Alayarian, BSc, MSc, DocSc, PhD, has been a clinical psy­ chologist and child psychotherapist since 1986, and in 1998 quali­ fied as an adult psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She studied Medical Anthropology and also obtained an MSc in Intercultural Psychotherapy. She is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society (BPS), and a member of the Clinical Psychology Forum, Professional Member of Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy, and a member of the Forum for Independent Psychotherapists (FIP). She is registered as a psychoanalytical psychotherapist with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapists (UKCP), under the Psychoanalytic Section. She is also an associate of Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility (PCSR), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, and a Council member of the Inter­ national Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (ERCT). She has worked with families and children in multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural settings. She trains and supervises psycholo­ gists, psychotherapists, and counsellors, and is in demand as a speaker and seminar leader on refugees, trauma, and related issues. xi xii ABOUT THE AUTHOR She was coordinator of child and family referrals and worked with children and families at Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre from 1993 until 2000. She worked as a clinical psychologist in Adult Community Mental Health in the NHS and also at the Tavistock Clinic, Children and Family Department Learning Disability Service with children and adults, their families or carers. She is the former head of Therapy Service and Chair of Fostering Panel at Childcare Co-operative. She is the co-founder and presently the Clinical Director of the Refugee Therapy Centre, a charity in North London providing psychotherapy and associated treatments to refugees and asylum seekers. She is the editor of Resilience, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: The Work of the Refugee Therapy Centre (Kamac, 2007), which relates to the experience of refugees and asylum seekers who survived human rights' violations.