International Therapeutic Peace and Justice in Bosnia

During the 1990s international policy highlighted the psychological effect of war on populations and promoted psychosocial programmes to facilitate psychological healing. The rapid rise of concern for war trauma is influenced by the contemporary Anglo-American therapeutic ethos, which analyses political, economic and social issues in terms of cycles of emotional dysfunctions. The article critically examines the development of an international therapeutic paradigm. The article contends that international therapeutic governance pathologizes war-affected populations as psychologically dysfunctional and lacking the capacity for self-government without extensive external empowerment. Yet international therapeutic governance may actually inhibit post-war recovery even as its model of therapeutic justice and development seeks that populations lower their expectations of the peace and curb their aspirations.