Trauma, memory and the future

Opinion Cyprus problemmental health Trauma, memory and the future ΕΞ ΑΦΟΡΜΗΣ ΤΡΙΤΗ 15 ΣΕΠΤ2026 Relevant News Trauma, memory and the future 15 September 2026 Court upholds detention of monk charged with attempted murder at Cyprus monastery 15 September 2026 Diego Armando Aparicio: Queer is what hasn’t arrived yet 15 September 2026 Marios Demetriou 15 September 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber I sat down with neurologist-psychiatrist Dr Kyriakos Veresies to talk about psychological trauma in the Cyprus problem. We discussed the way memory tied to hatred and enmity gets passed down on both sides of the barbed wire. He’s spent years studying this exact question, so I asked him: how does the experience of the past turn into an image of the present, and an expectation for the future? Dr Veresies, who chairs the Department of Social Sciences and Behaviour at PHILIPS University in Nicosia, started by telling me: “We need to separate three things we constantly muddle together: the historical event, the psychological trauma, and hostility towards the Other. “Cyprus,” he added, “carries deep trauma on both sides. There were deaths, missing people, displacement, violence, lost property, the destruction of family and community ties. “Those experiences don’t just disappear because the decades pass. But remembering a traumatic event doesn’t mean we have to hand down the hostility that got tangled up with it too. Memory itself isn’t the problem. “A society has the right, and I’d say the duty, to remember injustices and crimes. But what matters isn’t only what we remember, it’s how we tell the story. One version of events can cast our own community purely as the victim, and the other purely as the perpetrator. “A different version can hold onto the historical facts and who was responsible, while still recognising human complexity. That doesn’t mean treating everything as equal. It doesn’t mean forgetting who did what. It means trying to separate historical truth from inherited hostility.” I asked Dr Veresies to sum up his position, and he told me: “It comes down to a research question, rather than a final answer. What I want,” he added, “is to look at whether we can build a form of historical memory that tells the truth about the past, honours the victims, and keeps the historical record intact, without turning the other community into a permanent psychological enemy. “In one line: memory without inherited hatred. That doesn’t mean we should forget. Quite the opposite. We need to remember better, with historical accuracy, not selective memory. Remember the dead and the missing, the people who lost their homes, the violence and the injustice. But we have to be very careful that the memory of the crime doesn’t turn into a legacy of hatred. Because the moment it does, the past stops being the past. It becomes a command for the future.” Subscribe to our Newsletter Latest News Court upholds detention of monk charged with attempted murder at Cyprus monastery Diego Armando Aparicio: Queer is what hasn’t arrived yet Cyprus Ecologists to join Akrotiri protest against new antenna installations Cyprus bird conservation group warns of ‘trap’ as ELAM targets activists in parliament ‘Mafia state’: Police form investigative team for corruption probe naming Anastasiades The housing problem and the solutions on offer Cyprus hourly-paid state workers announce new strike, threaten 48-hour walkout Follow en.philenews on Google News and be the first to know all the news about Cyprus and the world.