Psychiatr News February 2, 2007
Volume 42, Number 3, page 9
© 2007 American Psychiatric Association
Strategies for Surviving Torture
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Ezat Mossallanejed, Ph.D., an Iranian torture victim, is now helping
others who have experienced torture.
Photo: Joan Arehart-Treichel
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While they were being tortured or imprisoned, Ezat Mossallanejed, Ph.D.,
and his prison mates used a number of strategies to survive and keep their
sanity, he explained in his book, Torture in the Age of Fear
(Seraphim Editions, 2005). Here are some of them:
- Physical activity. "In the four years I was in prison,"
he wrote, "I discovered the value of regular exercise. It may sound
trivial, but exercise is also a method of resistance, a way of regaining
control over your life. [Also] if you are healthy, you are better able to
withstand torture....Even when I was so badly injured that I could barely
move, I made a point of flexing those parts of my body, such as my arms and my
neck, which had not been injured."
- Task setting. "To do nothing in prison, day after day for four
years, is to go mad," he admitted. "My friends and I knew this,
and so we would invent all sorts of distractions for ourselves. For instance,
we would take out the less-cooked inner part of our bread, mix it with our
saliva by chewing, and knead the bread for hours until we got a dough similar
to Playdoh."
- Art. "I was not an artist," he said, "but when it
became necessary, I found myself capable of creating art in order to survive,
and seeing the finished products in my hand gave me great joy. Such
experiences help me to appreciate the Art Therapy Program of the Canadian
Center for Victims of Torture" (see accompanying article).
- Music. "I remember one particularly good singer who used to go
to the bedside of a severely ill cellmate and sing the most beautiful songs.
That inmate was a very young boy...who had been arrested at random and
severely tortured by burning....The singing was one of the few things that
seemed to make him happy."
- Storytelling and humor. "I myself have no talent for singing,
and so in prison I learned to tell stories instead. I found that humor in
particular was valued.... We could make ourselves feel better by making our
oppressors appear ridiculous....[In fact] satire was a form of humor
particularly suited to our situation, since it is as much about pointing out
the absurdity and injustice of a system as it is about laughter. In this way
it became another form of resistance, and it minimized the amount of power
that our torturers and interrogators held over us."
- Love. The most important thing that helped Mossallanejed and his
fellow prisoners survive was love, he emphasized. "I will never forget
an engineer who became totally dysfunctional as a result of the tortures he
had undergone. We made a desperate [yet unsuccessful] attempt to take him out
of his self-imposed isolation....[Then] a man from his town was brought in...
.The new inmate took it upon himself to wash the engineer's clothes and
persuaded him to eat well....Within a period of two months, an unbelievable
miracle happened. Our engineer was completely cured."
Related Article:
-
Program Helps Torture Victims Find Solace, Healing
- Joan Arehart-Treichel
Psychiatr News 2007 42: 9-32.
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