Browsing by Author "Haikala, Topias"

This study deals with experiences of children evacuated from the Finnish Karelia during the Second World War (1939 and 1944). The study has been divided into two parts: 1) experiences concerning the acute psychological stress of the evacuation period and the psychosocial factors relieving it, and 2) later psychological effects of the evacuation and the subjects’ ways of processing it. The study is a qualitative study utilizing interpretative phenomenological analysis as its method. The sample consists of six child evacuees. The acute psychological stress during the evacuation arises from loss of home, uncertainty, fear of war related dangers, and distress and sorrow absorbed from close relatives. The strongest factors that eased the psychological stress were diverse forms of social support, acute psychological dismissal of the event and considering the evacuation exciting. The significance of social support is especially evident in the cases where it lacks. At the places where the evacuees settled, the psychological stress arises mainly from indentity crisis, lack of parental attention and tenderness, negative reseption of the locals, and bullying. The main factors that relieved the psychological stress were social support acquired from family and other evacuees and forming of peer groups. The interviewees describe three types of strategies applied to process the problematic evacuee identity: conforming to the norms and expectations of the locals, trying to separate from the evacuee identity and forming a strong personal identity. The later psychological effects of the evacuation are diverse. The most common are problems concerning the sense of belonging, mental roots and feeling of home. Several interviewees describe difficulties in trying to mentally settle down in new regions or to feel like home. Many describe travelling to the lost Karelia and social support of other evacuees as important for psychological processing. The process, however, does not delete the problematic experience or the mental scars caused by the evacuation, but it makes it easier to understand oneself and to get in touch with the early experiences. The results are compared to earlier empirical studies. Theories used to give perspective to the results are Breakwell’s theory of threatend identity (1986), Berry’s cathegorization of acculturation strategies (1997), Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance (1957) and Kuusisto-Arponen’s concepts and considerations concerning the traumatized sense of belonging (2009, 2008a & 2008b).