Metaphors For Trauma: A Cross-Cultural Qualitative Comparison in Brazil, India, Poland, and Switzerland.

The concept of psychological trauma implies that people experiencing traumatic stress are wounded, thus relating to the metaphor of a physical injury. Although this notion is widely accepted by clinicians and researchers in mental health, there is evidence of a broad range of metaphorical idioms for extremely aversive experiences or catastrophic events across different cultures. In this ethnopsychological study, we aimed to investigate and contrast culturally shared metaphors for trauma among four distinct cultural groups: two indigenous communities (Pitaguary from Brazil, Adivasis from India) and two rural communities (mountain villagers of Gondo, Switzerland; the Lemko ethnic minority in Poland). The communities in Brazil and in Poland were marked by historical trauma, and the communities in India and Switzerland each suffered from a natural disaster. Semistructured interviews that focused on metaphors shared within each community were conducted with key informants and laypersons (Brazil: N = 14, India: N = 28, Poland, N = 13, Switzerland: N = 9). We conducted separate metaphor analyses, then cross-culturally contrasted the findings from the four samples. Across the four cultural groups, we found similar metaphorical concepts of trauma related to bodily processes, such as shock, burden, and wound.