Indigenous maps of subjectivity and attacks on linking: Forced separation and its psychiatric sequelae in Australia’s Stolen Generation

Abstract

Forced removal of part Aboriginal children from their indigenous mothers was part of Australian government policy over the period 1914 to the late 1960s. There were severe psychological consequences for the children, and a strong suspicion, yet to be epidemiographically researched, that many of them died very young, from suicide or the accidents and illnesses associated with psychological damage received at a period of developmental vulnerability. This paper looks at some of the survivors. It describes the symptomatology of a group of nine adult members of the ‘Stolen Generation’, selected for psychiatric examinations for a group legal action against the Commonwealth by the Stolen Generations Unit of the Northern Territory Aboriginal Legal Aid Service. Interviews using a culturally sensitive reflective listening mode were conducted to Present Mental State Examination standard. An assessment along DSM-IV Axis VI (the so-called ‘defences of the ego’) was also performed, and interviewees completed the Goldberg Shorter (18 item) Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire (GSADQ). The clinical picture shared by all interviewees was consistent with a contemporary understanding of the harmful impact of chronic trauma on the developing self. This would allow a diagnosis of ‘complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’, ‘depressive’ type, with disorders of self-organisation, and marked somatising features. There were universally high abnormal scores on the GSADQ (mean total score 16.4, Depression 7.8, Anxiety 8.6). Specific issues of cultural identity conflict were also painfully salient. However, there were none of the symptoms of deeper personality damage usually associated with very early infantile neglect or abuse. The inference is that this group had received good pre-separation nurturing from their original carers, and that peer support was also a protective factor. That Indigenous subjectivity and identity are construed and constructed along patterns that are significantly different from Western middle class ones is a truism. The authors were fortunate in having received accounts of these matters from their Aboriginal mentors. Some of these understandings are embodied in two paintings, Four Brain Story by Rachel Napaljarri Jurra and Brain Dreaming Tracks by Sally Butler. These have allowed us to catalogue the ‘attacks on linking’ which have occurred, and to bring these received understandings to the darker question of how this social phenomenon could happen. This question is also considered in terms of Bion’s (1959) notion of ‘attacks on linking’.