We’re all familiar with the notion of psychological trauma — damage to an individual’s psyche caused by an extremely distressing event. But there’s also another kind of trauma: a collective disturbance that happens to a group of people when their world is suddenly upended.
Consider the Buffalo Creek flood of 1972. In Buffalo Creek, a mountain hollow in West Virginia, a coal-mining company had deposited more than a million gallons of wastewater and sludge, checked by a rudimentary dam. Rain caused water levels to rise, and on Feb. 26, the dam burst. An enormous wall of thick black waste came barreling down the hollow, destroying one mining hamlet after another. Homes, churches, roads — everything was swept away. One hundred and twenty-five people were killed.
Visiting the area the following year, the sociologist Kai Erikson found the survivors psychologically traumatized. Residents grieved for lost family members and friends. Many relived the event in flashbacks.
[For more of this story, written by Neil Gross, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12...llective-trauma.html]
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