When it came time to decide on the topic for her master’s thesis in Clinical Psychology, Carolina Camões was only certain of one thing: she wanted to talk about the trauma of women who fought against the regime in the pre-25th of April 1974. “There is a lot of talk about the impact of the colonial war, but the work on women who were tortured by the PIDE is very scarce”, she says. However, Lisa Matos, her advisor at Ispa – University Institute of Psychological, Social and Life Sciences, advised her not to stop at revisiting the past and to look at how this trauma could have implications for the present, given the growth of the far right. What he discovered was that this phenomenon is faced with concern, disappointment and some guilt, but also with an enormous desire to continue fighting for democracy and its fundamental values.
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