Reparology: A Scientific Evolutionary Model for Healing from Genocide
EDITORIAL, 10 Nov 2025
#924 | Diane Perlman - TRANSCEND Media Service
Time Doesn’t Heal Wounds–People Do
For decades, I have been dreaming of a time that would be ripe for a truth and justice process for Palestine/Israel. Conditions for Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) are impossible during hostilities, while society is gripped by mass hysteria and psychological regression.
I have been thinking about Carl Jung’s 1945 essay, “After the Catastrophe.” Only After could Jung reflect on the nature of “apocalyptic events,” collective guilt, and the “meaning of the whole tragedy.”
When evil breaks at any point into the order of things, our whole circle of psychic protection is disrupted.
Being forced to helplessly witness the depths of human cruelty, we experience vicarious trauma. And learned helplessness.
The sight of evil kindles evil in the soul…. The victim is not the only sufferer; everybody in the vicinity of the crime, including the murderer, suffers with him. Something of the abysmal darkness of the world has broken in on us, poisoning the very air we breathe and befouling the water with the stale, nauseating taste of blood.
Despite “Never Again,” the UN, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on Genocide, the ICC, the ICJ, nothing has fulfilled the UN Charter’s determination to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”
“The terrible things that have happened… are a blow aimed at all [humankind]. … the fact that one member of the human family could sink to the level of the concentration camp throws a dubious light on all the others. Who are we to imagine that ‘it couldn’t happen here’?”
Nothing has prevented Netanyahu’s regime’s unstoppable killing rampage, attacks on seven countries, with collusion from US government, Christian Zionists, and world governments. Gaza has become the center of the universe.
The question remains: How am I to live with this shadow? What attitude is required if I am to be able to live in spite of evil? .. a complete spiritual renewal is needed … each man must strive to achieve it for himself. … The eternal truths cannot be transmitted mechanically; in every epoch they must be born anew from the human psyche.
While working on our own spiritual renewal, we can cultivate conditions for emerging from this collective insanity.
This quote stuck in my mind for 30 years
Even a saint would have to pray unceasingly for the souls of Hitler and Himmler, the Gestapo and the S.S., in order to repair without delay the damage done to his own soul.
Evil calls for expiation, otherwise the wicked will destroy the world utterly, or the good suffocate in their rage which they cannot vent, and in either case no good will come of it.
How do we expiate humanity to restore wholeness? It is a matter of consciousness.
Interregnum
Some consider the current cataclysms as the last throes of a declining empire as Johan Galtung predicted in The Fall of the US Empire.
Antonio Gramsci described an interregnum period as a chaotic phase of upheaval where the old order “is dying,” but “the new cannot be born.” A “time of monsters” when authoritarians exploit chaos to hold onto power, while emerging forces struggle to consolidate power.
Gramsci envisioned a group of entrepreneurial elites, with skills and sensibilities to facilitate the transition to the new paradigm. “Organic intellectuals,” acting consciously, draw upon existing ideas to influence a better outcome. They articulate worldviews that align with people’s material conditions and values to shape consciousness and cultivate the new order.
My dream for a Palestine/Israel TRC is premature and “utopian” during mass hysteria, violence and denial, but worth articulating a vision for when time is ripe.
Truth and Transformation
TRCs have emerged globally since the 1970s, evolving as we recognize responsibility to victims, the need for coexistence, and preventing spirals of violence.
Ancient and recent rituals help societies emerge from unspeakable horrors – from Hawaii’s ancient Ho’o Pono Pono to South Africa’s famous TRC), led by Bishop Desmond Tutu, designed to prevent a bloodbath. Emphasizing the Christian value of forgiveness, perpetrators could apply for amnesty in exchange for truth.
Below is a chart of 30 Global TRCs. See “Review Essay and Annotated Bibliography” of TRCs by Kevin Avruch and Beatriz Vejarano
Dilemmas and Contradictions
TRCs designed according to legal, religious and political agendas are constrained by rules, interests and beliefs. Limitations include retraumatization of victims, lack of follow-up, hollow apologies lacking remorse, etc. Ancient rituals possess more wisdom.
Every situation, with unique features and common patterns required individual design, like “political therapy.”
Tensions between the needs and desires of victims and the crimes of perpetrators, are expressed by Martha Minow’s title, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence.
South Africa’s innovative strategy granted amnesty to perpetrators who testified without remorse. Public testimony of victims and religious pressure to forgive was retraumatizing for some and liberating for others.
Minow questions issues of justice for individual and collective healing when amnesty equals impunity. Retributive and restorative justice must be evaluated for impact on social transformation. See Minow’s 12 goals for TRCs (p. 88) below.
John Paul Lederach’s peacebuilding paradigm involves creation of a place where Truth, Mercy, Justice, and Peace can meet.
Joseph Montville, refers to healing components of contrition and forgiveness, essential to peacemaking. Three steps leading to reconciliation in problem-solving settings include joint historical analysis of the conflict; recognition of injustices and resulting historic wounds; and acceptance of moral responsibility.
Montville stresses the need to address the psychological needs of the victims and victimizers, including unhealed traumas that impact individual, group and national psychologies, and sense of victimhood, especially with ethnic conflict. He describes “an inescapable link between justice and peace.”
Download PDF FILE:
Global Truth and Reconciliation Commissions Charts
Overcoming TRC Shortcomings
Most TRCs focus on what Galtung calls negative peace, the absence of violence, rather than positive peace.
· Negative Peace
Aims to prevent violence and revenge. They may not analyze and correct underlying causes, structural inequalities or grievances. Results are fragile.
· Positive Peace
Aims to analyze and address underlying causes, repair harm, ensure equity, and create structures and conditions to foster quality of life, social cohesion, and prosperity. Reparative forms of justice end impunity, provide dignity for survivors and a model for society. Positive peace transforms societies, enabling sustainable development, trust, and collective flourishing.
Phoenix rising from the ashes of the Holocaust, symbolized by images of the concentration camp striped uniforms. symbolizes renewal and transformation after catastrophe. Unfortunately, this Phoenix jumped out of a burning building and landed on innocent Palestinian society. More is needed to prevent traumatic reenactment.
Conscious Evolution
We have enough knowledge now to design processes that are a quantum leap beyond previous TRCs. Enlightened methods informed by social science, can meet psychological needs and legitimate goals optimized for all parties. Galtung’s Transcend Method, with analysis, diagnosis, prognosis and therapy, includes all parties to the conflict. We have wisdom enough to address historical trauma, reverse cycles of violence and transform protracted conflicts. Opportunities for growth and repair create conditions for structural peace.
Conscious evolution addresses
- individual healing to promote development and psychological growth
- collective healing of systems, underlying conditions, structures, and belief systems
- political development, evolving higher level social institutions to promote well-being
- evolving cultural norms mitigating against conflict and violence
Jung and Galtung: The Transcendent Function and Conflict Transformation
Jung’s theory of transcendent function (TF) resonates with Galtung’s approach to conflict transformation (CT) by creating a new reality – suggesting an archetypal principle.
Conflict transformation, as opposed to “conflict resolution,” marked by compromise, requires creativity to create a new reality that bridges legitimate goals of all parties for mutually benefit.
Jung’s transcendent function is a mechanism for transformation, a “manifestation of the energy that springs from the tension of opposites” that gives birth to wholeness. Rather than collapsing to one side, a creative third emerges. It includes and transcends the opposites. facilitating a transition to a new psychological attitude with “a capacity to transcend the destructive tendency to pull (or be pulled) to one side or the other.” (A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis, Samuels, Shorter, Plaut)
The Galtung/TRANSCEND Conflict Diagram
TRANSCEND Method
REPAROLOGY™: Towards a Scientific Evolutionary Model of Healing after Protracted Collective Trauma
In 1999, as a Fellow at the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, I deciphered a formula of elements essential for healing according to evolutionary psychology.
Through clinical experience with trauma and abuse, interviews with Holocaust survivors, TRC practices, observations and reviews of the literature, themes emerge as universally significant in the process of healing. They reveal an archetypal psychological pattern for repair on individual and collective dimensions.
The Reparology™ formula represents an ideal to strive for. It places a responsibility on bystanders, the community and the government to provide reparative experiences.
I coined “Reparology™ as a “Science of Repair.” “Reconciliation” is problematic for those with no desire to reconcile with dehumanized enemies.
Incorporating components of this formula into TRC designs will maximize the healing potential for survivors who desperately deserve it, and for the health and well-being of all members of the society and its functioning. This is conscious evolution.
To the extent that governments fail to provide them, individuals, groups and organizations can compensate and supply whatever possible to whomever possible whenever possible. We can all bear witness.
In the absence of an official process, there is much citizens can do to raise consciousness, provide some healing and prepare the ground for the future. Two examples of People’s Tribunals are
Richard Falk’s Gaza People’s Tribunals and Jonathan Kuttab’s Philadelphia Tribunal
The Formula: Archetypal Requirements for Healing from Protracted Collective Trauma
1 – SAFETY
End of conflict, hostilities, danger and oppression.
Basic needs – food, shelter, health
2 – TRUTH
Accurate, factual, recognition of facts.
Testimonial truth
Historical analysis
Demystification from propaganda to expose process of lying, deception, tactics
Humanize the enemy
Correct narratives
Educational campaign, shared narrative
“Walk Through History” exercise
3 – BEARING WITNESS
Acknowledging, receiving, and containing the totality of the victim’s experience with compassion by loved ones, society and the world community.
An accurate recording of corrected historical narrative, testimonials, archives, and tribunals.
4 –MOURNING
Create individual and collective grief and mourning processes and rituals.
Enlist religious leaders to design experiences addressing magnitude of loss.
Private and public rituals according to culture and religion.
Create a registry with bios of each person and family who were killed
5 –ATONEMENT/APOLOGY
Sincere apology to victims.
Vindication, restoration of dignity, release from shame and humiliation caused by victimization Admission of perpetrator’s remorse. When unavailable, admission by members of group or other representative (President Clinton apologized for Tuskegee Syphilis Study in 1997, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized in 2017 to former indigenous students forced into Canada’s residential schools)
Requesting forgiveness changes victims’ status, with power to accept or reject. Earned forgiveness empowers victims, liberating them from the victim position.
6 – ATONEMENT/JUSTICE
Creatively use a variety of strategies.
Prosecution and incarceration, when necessary to ensure safety.
Transformational justice when possible.
Allow some to atone, apologize, make amends, be redeemed.
Compensatory justice, symbolic justice, documentary justice can provide comfort.
If incarceration is impractical consider house arrest.
Have perpetrators bear witness to the suffering and damage they caused
Publicly hold perpetrators accountable.
Exclude and shun perpetrators.
7 – ATONEMENT/RESTITUTION, REPARATION, and COMPENSATION
Restitution of equal rights and status
Compensate losses
Improve material-financial conditions for quality of life
Symbolic gestures, acknowledge responsibility and desire to make good.
Laws, policies, institutions prevent future harm.
8 – MEMORIALS, RITUALS, MONUMENTS, MUSEUMS
Public space for remembering
Monuments
Days of remembrance, “sorry days,” holidays, public time and events
Create public rituals, intragroup and intergroup.
9 – TRANSFORMATION, REDEMPTION
Promote transformation of society.
Few former perpetrators may be redeemable. Create a “Redemption Process,” like the transformation of Indian Emperor Ashoka, facilitated by psychologists to support former perpetrators in deep transformation processes
10 – REBIRTH, RENEWAL, LIBERATION
New forms
New political, religious and social leadership completely disidentified from previous regimes
Political forms of recognition, sovereignty, representation, confederation, self-determination.
Provide hope for the future show that suffering was not in vain.
Develop cross-cutting networks of like artists, businesspeople, psychologists, environmentalists, youth
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Diane Perlman, PhD is a clinical and political psychologist, devoted to applying knowledge from psychology, conflict studies and social sciences to designing strategies and policies to reverse nuclear proliferation, to drastically reduce terrorism, reduce enmity, and to raise consciousness about nonviolent strategies for tension reduction and conflict transformation. She is a visiting scholar at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, is active in Psychologists for Social Responsibility, a member of the TRANSCEND Media Service Editorial Committee, the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, and on the Global Council of Abolition 2000. Some of her writings can be found on www.consciouspolitics.org and www.SanityandSurvival.com. Email: dianeperlman@gmail.com
Tags: Conflict Transformation, Truth, Violent conflict
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 10 Nov 2025.
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