• 作者：M.-D. Colas^a ; ^{colas-benayoun@wanadoo.fr} ; F. Benslama^b ; M. Daudin^c
• 关键词：Alté ; rité ; Blessures de guerre ; Gueules Cassé ; es ; Identification ; Ré ; paration
• 刊名：Annales medico-psychologiques
• 出版年：2012
• 期刊代码：78_00034487
• 类别：psy
• 出版时间：May, 2012
• 卷：170
• 期：4
• 页码：238-243
• 文件大小：231 K

Objectives

In the context of present-day 鈥渁symmetric warfare鈥? it is becoming more and more difficult to find a response to the crucial question: 鈥淔or whom, and for what, are we prepared to die?鈥?In action far from his homeland, today's soldier has to work hard to make sense of his mission. Legitimacy is eroded by the fact that alternating states of war and peace change all the time, placing him at the mercy of an inconstant public opinion. More than any other entity, 鈥?em>Gueules Cass茅es鈥?embody the horror of war, and the violence that we try to keep from seeing and seek to forget. How does one survive when one's body has lost its protective cover, when it unveils the shapelessness of flesh, a face that is indistinguishable from an animal's? How does one get back one's individuality when the only visible part of one's body, inaccessible even to oneself, becomes something monstrous?

Patients

In 1921, after the First World War, three horribly disfigured French soldiers founded an association to come to the aid of fellow comrades. They proposed an original way to support those who had sacrificed their faces for their country. They chose to give them back a social existence, something to build on, an attentive look. More than one hundred years later, their story is still applicable to the new generations injured in combat. We propose to analyze two real-life stories of disfigured soldiers during recent conflicts. They make us seek to understand the effects bodily injuries have on the psychological reality and to illuminate the process of 鈥渁lterisation鈥? The evidence presented by 鈥?em>Gueules Cass茅es鈥?forces one to question the theory that comprises the basic principle of identity in human beings, and to rethink the paradigm of alterity.

Results

Following this initial phase of reparation to the physical wounds, comes a much slower narcissistic reconstruction which requires a long period of work, in front of the mirror, under the scrutiny of others, and sometimes through a phase of symbolic identification: being one of the 鈥?em>Gueules Cass茅es鈥? 鈥渂eing a soldier with a scar, a war wound鈥濃€?The support offered by the group, the right to dignity and reparation allows the wounded soldier to subscribe to a new type of recognition, the one offered by a new alterity. In fact, those most disfigured, after long years of 鈥渞econstruction鈥? have asked for more as the trauma went way beyond that of just their appearance. They asked to once again inhabit a society touched by amnesia. 鈥淭o be a witness of鈥? is to get back some legitimacy and to make sense of the injury.

Conclusion

The 鈥淏roken Faces鈥?we met have tried to forge new ties with their kind, to pass on their experience. Entering into an 鈥渆thnic group鈥?with common features has the effect of 鈥渟ymbolic transplant鈥? of recognition, and gives back an identity to the broken face.