Emotions as Metaphors: Critically Reconstructing Psychiatric and Cultural Discourses for Trauma and Healing

The complexity associated with defining what emotions are is as intriguing as addressing difficult or painful emotions of people undergoing dire circumstances in their lives. Such an intrigue has led several historians as well as social scientists devoted to the study of emotions to comprehend the perspectives about emotion rather than pursuing its discovery as an objective truth. However, as the critical or constructionist paradigm posits, perspectives or theories of emotions are necessarily entangled with their functionality (or consequences) for the human lives being explored. Such functionality may range from sidetracking to creating humanizing spaces for difficult human emotions experienced as a consequence of undergoing trauma. This chapter takes up a critical reconstruction of such functionality that psychiatric as well as cultural (or socio-political) discourses have served to the survivors of trauma towards possibilities of healing. Whether it is psychiatric literature or qualitative studies (focusing on the culturally or structurally shaped experiences) of trauma and healing, we illustrate how emotions are used as metaphors to address the paradigmatic focus of the studies. In doing so, importantly, psychiatric as well as cultural discourses have uniquely shaped not only the healing (or a denial of it) but also redefined the importance of dignity or voice of the survivors.