Abstract
Often, we assume the traumatic nature of first response work has inevitable repercussions. This can lead to assumptions about trauma being the reason for distress, resulting in fixed ideas about diagnosis and treatment, without the complex socio-political and psychodynamic implications being fully considered. This paper challenges such assumptions by exploring the presentation of PTSD in ‘old guard’ police officers at the cusp of the post-apartheid era in South Africa. Focusing on long serving ‘white’ Afrikaner policemen, an argument is advanced that, while a diagnosis of PTSD may have enabled the old guard to legitimately access care and support for distress, at another level it served to displace core conflicts related to masculinity (and other aspects of identity) triggered by adjustment difficulties inherent in the transition from apartheid to post-apartheid South Africa. A case study is used to illustrate these observations.
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Notes
This paper is based the first author’s research for her PhD and is undertaken under supervision as part of a post-doctoral scholarship.
Pre-1994 the old guard’s psychic and social lives could be said to have mirrored one another, helping them deal with life’s existential questions in an affirming, straight forward, unambiguous and predictable manner. Under these circumstances the old guard appeared better able to cope with the distress of their job. Life post 1994 heralded a totally new and foreign police culture for the old guard. In the cases I treated, the parallel between the old guard’s psychic and social lives seemed to gradually collapse, threatening and undermining their taken-for-granted ways of affirming their identity. This appeared to leave the old guard disoriented, anxious and distressed, with no internal resources to cope with police work, the losses they experienced or the changes they faced (Auld and Cartwright 2018:25).
I have confined myself to clinical material from a patient who has finished his treatment and from whom permission for publication has been sought. Pseudonyms have been employed and place names changed.
A medically boarded South African Police Service member is a person who is incapacitated because of ill-health. No fault is attributed to the member. This enables the person to stay in employment if this is at all reasonably possible. The member can be boarded ‘on’ or ‘off’ duty: as a result of work related or unrelated events.
The Voortrekkers were Dutch-speaking colonists who took part in the Great Trek from 1835 to 1846. During the Great Trek the Voortrekkers moved up into the interior of southern Africa in search of land where they could establish their own homeland, independent of British rule.
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Auld, S., Cartwright, D. The Social Construction of PTSD: The Case of the ‘Old Guard’ Policemen After South African Democracy. Cult Med Psychiatry 44, 175–192 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-019-09649-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-019-09649-2