Following up to a recommendation from Ted Rau, I read Steven Wineman’s book “Power-under: trauma and nonviolent change” (available for free to be downloaded). The book has left a deep impression on me, and so I would like to leave some notes over here in case they can be useful to anybody.
The book focuses on the impact of trauma in what the author calls “power-under” dynamics. Power-under is when we claim to be the victim and yield power by reverting to blame and guilt, and often also anger.
The impact of trauma
Wineman elaborates a lot on the impact of trauma. In essence I would summarise his key points as follows:
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The essence of trauma is that we felt totally powerless and overwhelmed by what was done to us.
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When we get traumatised, the time stamp on a memory doesn’t get closed. Our brains therefore get triggered regularly, because they think the situation is still ongoing.
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When we get triggered, all the energy for flight or fight strategies that we didn’t use when the traumatising event happened (because we froze), gets released in the present moment.
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“Powerless rage” or “traumatic rage” is what happens when we get triggered: we need to release the anger that we stored in our nervous system, and also to blame the first best available person for the suffering that we are going through.
When triggered, the survivor can descend with stunning abruptness into a victim state. Consciously or not, we have returned to the moment of trauma. It is a subjective experience of being acted upon maliciously – of being acted upon by an overwhelming force which is entirely outside of our control and which we are powerless to stop. One moment things are normal; the next moment things are out of control, from without and from within. Externally, something is happening to us again that we experience as profoundly unfair, totally wrong, which suddenly makes life feel intolerable. Internally, feelings are suddenly unleashed we may not even be able to name, which come from an unspeakable place inside us – a place of horror. They are feelings that make us want to scream, or smash things, or lash out at the person who has caused this, or hurt ourselves, or disappear. (p. 63)
The author often documents his case academically, but he also provides a lot of real-life examples, which make his theory much clearer. He gives an example from his own life, from when he would get triggered by his son or partner (often because of innocuous gestures), which made him withdraw or become distant, because his anger made him implode (p. 68). Other examples are of violence committed by Holocaust survivors, and of male batterers (who consistently think of themselves as victims).
It doesn’t need to get physically violent though, and Wineman gives the example of meetings. Subjective powerlessness can lead us to shut down, withdraw, feel silenced and feel that decisions have been imposed on them without their true participation or consent. On the end of the spectrum, subjective powerlessness can also lead us to hyper-participate in efforts to make ourselves heard, without our conscious awareness of our effect on others. In the most destructive form, according to the author, power-under can erupt in the form of personal attacks, blaming and related kinds of lashing out in which traumatic rage can immobilize an entire group (p. 90).
The impact of living in a domination society
In chapter 3 the book then looks at trauma and gender and it does so very systematically. First by looking at girls and boys as victims and perpetrators, then at women and men as victims and perpetrators.
I found this chapter difficult to read, because it’s so confronting, and I also found it extremely insightful. What stands out at first is of course the pervasiveness of violence in our society. When documented in so much detail, it really becomes painful.
But then in second instance it’s the violence that is less visible that really hit me in the face. In the section about women as perpetrators for example it is explained how some women who are mothers hold objective power over their children and sometimes use that power abusively. According to the author this often comes from a place of subjective powerlessness (p. 157). In the section about boys as victims, it is then explained how many boys get traumatised by the “gender straightjacket” of patriarchy, which teaches them (often violently) to numb their emotions and adhere to the masculine code (p. 129).
In chapter 4 the author concludes that trauma and experiences of powerlessness are pervasive, because our society is organised around domination:
The breadth and depth of domination in our society generates an extraordinary volume of recurring traumatic experience. Virtually everyone routinely runs up against forces on one continuum of oppression or another – individuals in dominant positions, images, written words, institutional arrangements, cultural norms, laws, policies – which demean or degrade or devalue or humiliate or violate or arbitrarily constrain them, and in the face of which they have no sense of efficacy or control. This happens at work, at home, at school, on the streets, in stores, in the media, and in the macro-structures of economic and political power. The result is endless, chronic opportunities for people to experience themselves as victims and to experience traumatic rage. (p. 172)
Implications for social change movements
The implications for social change movements manifest at the micro, meso and macro level.
At the micro level , the author points to the tendency toward infighting in left organisations:
it commonly serves the immediate psychological needs of traumatized people to identify and lash out at a proximate villain – someone who is known, who is within reach, and who can be blamed for the intolerable pain and sense of injustice that the survivor experiences. Within movement organizations, it is fellow-activists who can readily become the objects of our rage – over heated ideological or strategic differences; over the more mundane frustrations and conflicts that arise in any organization; and, perhaps most poignantly, when we believe that people with whom we thought we held shared values are acting outside of those political principles.
The sense of being betrayed by those we had trusted to any degree is enormously evocative and triggering for trauma survivors. In the context of social change organizations this can lead to truly internecine and irresolvable conflict, to vicious circles of rage and counter-rage: the “enemy,” who was supposed to be out there in the larger society, is suddenly perceived as being in the room. (p. 191-192)
At the meso level the author points to the difficulties people encounter to build coalitions. We tend to believe that our suffering is the greatest, which makes it difficult to empathise with the suffering of others. As a result we all stay in our little corner and we organise within our own faction, instead of making bridges to other groups who are also oppressed.
At the macro level there are lessons to be learned about how right wing populism plays into traumatic rage and manages to mobilise people around causes that direct their anger downward at oppressed and scapegoated groups. It’s easy to see how for example a narrative around “big government” resonates deeply with many people’s experiences of being overpowered in life. According to the author, to build more effective social change programs, we need to develop strategies that address the real powerlessness in people’s lives, by offering people ways to express rage and to gain a sense of power and safety that is not at the expense of Others (p. 201).
The way out
Wineman has three concrete suggestions on how to deal with this issue.
The first one is a very concrete one and is based on the practices of the Piedmont Peace Project. This group has created specific guidelines and agreements about unacceptable behaviour, and conscious attention to our procedures for resolving conflict.
The second suggestion runs like a common thread throughout the book and is about creating more awareness about the impact of trauma and powerless rage. According to the author, just as we can only constrain domination and power-over if we are able to name it, we can only constrain and transform power-under if have language to name it.
consciousness of trauma can help us to develop strategies for overcoming divisions and building unity on the left – so that venomous in-fighting is prevented or, if it does occur, we have better tools and resources for dealing with it. […]
If I identify not only as a victim of oppression but also as a traumatized person, it may give me a new perspective on my reactions and feelings toward members of other oppressed groups. […] If I identify as a traumatized person and have some understanding of the psychological effects of trauma, I may be able to take a step back from my rage and sense of betrayal at (for example) the dominating behavior of other activists and note that my reaction has to do with my own history of trauma as well as with their behavior. (p. 192)
Nonviolence as a strategy
Nonviolence is the author’s third suggestion on how to move forward. It is the subject of the fifth chapter of the book. For him it means that the basic value and integrity of each human being are non-negotiable. It’s a commitment to always see people as human beings, even if they are hurting us or oppressing us.
Wineman zooms in again on the group dynamics in social change groups. He explains how we tend fulfil our need for self-protection by lashing out at others, fuelled by a sense of traumatic powerlessness.
In all cases when violence is used as a strategy for self-protection after an attack is an accomplished fact, it cannot possibly succeed in protecting the victim from an attack that has already happened. This seems so obvious that it would not need to be said – except that so many of us are driven so relentlessly to try to defend ourselves against the violations we have experienced in our pasts. (p. 214)
At the organisational level , there are many possible strategies, including “noncooperation with personal attacks and other abusive behavior, structured dialogue aimed at mutual understanding of people’s subjective experiences, specific conflict resolution techniques, explicit appeals for adherence to established guidelines for the expression of rage, and a range of empathic responses to the traumatic experience underlying power-under behavior.” (p. 220)
At the personal level the author recognises that it requires a lot of personal work, because it requires us to open ourselves to our own pain and to the pain of others. This can be very challenging for trauma survivors, because we have difficulties seeing the difference between our historical experience of trauma and our present circumstances. When we are triggered and our nervous system longs for a proximate villain, we are quickly inclined to conclude that the other party is to blame, has betrayed our trust and is impossible to deal with. (p. 217)
Concretely Wineman points to “constructive rage” as the way forward, which is nonviolence in its purest form. It means that we move from subjective powerlessness and objective power (by doing harm when we are angry) to subjective empowerment and objective constraint. We are being challenged to learn that we are never completely powerless. No matter how abusively we have been treated, we always have options to behave constructively. And it’s a challenge to pay attention to the impact of our behaviour on others, to the power that we hold over others and to regulate our expressions of rage so that they do not cause harm or perpetuate cycles of abuse (p. 240).
Wineman concludes the book with two powerful examples of constructive rage. He first spends time explaining the extraordinary achievements of the civil rights movement, and then dedicates 10 pages to the story of Nelson Mandela. Both stories left me deeply in awe, and together with the wisdom of this book, deeply motivated to take on the challenges it leaves me.
as my life was not an easy journey.
