Humanitarian Psychology in War and Postwar Lebanon: Violence, Therapy and Suffering.

Abstract

Drawing on four ethnographic case studies, this dissertation, Humanitarian Psychology in War and Postwar Lebanon, examines the processes of psychologizing suffering in Lebanon from Israel’s invasion in 1982 to the Syrian Refugee crisis in 2012. It is a study of the psychological interventions introduced by humanitarian organizations as a response to war and violence in Lebanon. By tracing the aid ecologies that make specific kinds of subjects possible, this dissertation offers a rethinking of suffering as a subject position contingent on aid and violence in Lebanon. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this study follows the ways in which humanitarian psychology was contested, appropriated and debated by communities in Lebanon. Humanitarian psychology is a form of humanitarian expertise that employs psychiatric diagnoses and therapies to psychologize violence in conflict and post-conflict sites. The first case study addresses the humanitarian trouble in diagnosing trauma following Israel’s invasion in 1982 and the July War 2006. The second case study follows the psychologization process in South Lebanon after the July War, where personality disorders replaced trauma in the making of a therapeutic postwar self. The third case study addresses how new humanitarian therapies sought to prevent domestic violence by treating angry masculinities. The fourth case study focuses on the Syrian refugee crisis that shifted the conditions and relations of aid, enabling new narratives of suffering for Iraqi, Syrian, Sudanese and Palestinian refugees, as well as war-affected Lebanese. My study of the humanitarian psychologization of violence revealed the debates and tensions around violence, psychologization and suffering in Lebanon. Each case study shows a particular formation of aid, resources and care economies that produced specific relations and understandings of violence in Lebanon. The reconfiguration of suffering into psychic injuries depended on different assemblages of techno-moral discourses embedded in humanitarian therapies, NGO-ization and diagnostics. This dissertation also offers contributions to social work practice by providing a critique of the humanitarian trauma model, highlighting the importance of community-based mental health during war. Second, it traces how local social workers in Lebanon negotiate and challenge the work of global humanitarian organizations, as “gatekeepers” of mental health.