Les « Gueules Cassées », d’une génération à une autre : approche sociologique et psychopathologique des blessures de guerre

RésuméDans le contexte actuel des conflits dits asymétriques, il devient de plus en plus difficile de répondre aux questions fondamentales : pour qui et pour quoi meurt-on ? Projeté loin du territoire national, le soldat d’aujourd’hui a du mal à trouver un sens à sa mission. Le brouillage des frontières entre guerre et paix fragilise sa légitimité et l’abandonne à une opinion publique versatile. Deux témoignages de soldats défigurés dans le cadre de leurs missions nous invitent à entendre les effets de la blessure du corps sur la réalité psychique, d’historiciser le discours du sujet en proie à des processus « d’altérisation ». Après la phase de sauvetage et de réparation de la béance physique, s’opère une lente reconstruction narcissique. Elle passe par un long travail à l’épreuve du miroir, du regard d’autrui, et parfois par une identification à un trait symbolique : appartenir à la communauté des « Gueules Cassées », « être un militaire avec une cicatrice, une blessure de guerre »… L’aide offerte par le groupe, le droit à la dignité et à la réparation permettent d’inscrire le blessé au combat dans une dynamique de reconnaissance, celle d’une nouvelle figure de l’altérité.

ObjectivesIn the context of present-day “asymmetric warfare”, it is becoming more and more difficult to find a response to the crucial question: “For whom, and for what, are we prepared to die?” In action far from his homeland, today's soldier has to work hard to make sense of his mission. Legitimacy is eroded by the fact that alternating states of war and peace change all the time, placing him at the mercy of an inconstant public opinion. More than any other entity, “Gueules Cassées” embody the horror of war, and the violence that we try to keep from seeing and seek to forget. How does one survive when one's body has lost its protective cover, when it unveils the shapelessness of flesh, a face that is indistinguishable from an animal's? How does one get back one's individuality when the only visible part of one's body, inaccessible even to oneself, becomes something monstrous?PatientsIn 1921, after the First World War, three horribly disfigured French soldiers founded an association to come to the aid of fellow comrades. They proposed an original way to support those who had sacrificed their faces for their country. They chose to give them back a social existence, something to build on, an attentive look. More than one hundred years later, their story is still applicable to the new generations injured in combat. We propose to analyze two real-life stories of disfigured soldiers during recent conflicts. They make us seek to understand the effects bodily injuries have on the psychological reality and to illuminate the process of “alterisation”. The evidence presented by “Gueules Cassées” forces one to question the theory that comprises the basic principle of identity in human beings, and to rethink the paradigm of alterity.ResultsFollowing this initial phase of reparation to the physical wounds, comes a much slower narcissistic reconstruction which requires a long period of work, in front of the mirror, under the scrutiny of others, and sometimes through a phase of symbolic identification: being one of the “Gueules Cassées”, “being a soldier with a scar, a war wound”… The support offered by the group, the right to dignity and reparation allows the wounded soldier to subscribe to a new type of recognition, the one offered by a new alterity. In fact, those most disfigured, after long years of “reconstruction”, have asked for more as the trauma went way beyond that of just their appearance. They asked to once again inhabit a society touched by amnesia. “To be a witness of”, is to get back some legitimacy and to make sense of the injury.ConclusionThe “Broken Faces” we met have tried to forge new ties with their kind, to pass on their experience. Entering into an “ethnic group” with common features has the effect of “symbolic transplant”, of recognition, and gives back an identity to the broken face.