Published: March 2026

Keywords:
Adolescence, memories, dictatorships, dipoles, transgenerational trauma, psychotherapies.

Despina Kostopoulou

Despina Kostopoulou is a psychologist and works in psychotherapies with adolescents and their families at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Centre in Athens. She has worked in rehabilitation programs for adults with chronic psychiatric conditions. She studied psychology at the University of Thessaloniki and of Strasbourg and she has been trained in psychoanalysis. She has done post graduate studies on History, Theory and Methodology of Sciences (NKUA & NTUA). During the last years she has been studying the impacts of dictatorships in Latin America.

Abstract

From the year 2000 and on there was a “big bang” phenomenon of memory through testimonies, books and publications, interviews about the way children, adolescents and adults experienced dictatorships during the decades 1970-1990 in Latin America. Therapeutic treatments and social sciences’ studies reveal the complexity of the matter as well as the devotion of experts to multidisciplinary issues: psychopathology, despair, grief, memory, lack of justice and the unspeakable of the tortures. Narratives and relevant studies generate questions on what contemporary adolescents assume in democratic societies with the ascending of extreme political entities, the complexity in social and personal relationships, the economic crisis, the wars and the refugee / immigrant issue.