The Role of Psychology in the Study of Social Reconciliation: a Review of Existing Relevant Literature on Inter-Personal, Inter-Group and Inter-State Conflict

Traditionally, reconciliation includes conflict resolution and peacemaking process primarily focusing on the methods and mechanisms involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of intra- or inter-group conflicts such as negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and other. Practically, states can normalized relationship fairly rapidly and achieve government-to-government reconciliation, but factually the former adversaries cannot build a stable peace even if the military actions have been stopped. States can become friends fast, but societies not. Therefore, the study of reconciliation slowly has been moved to social-psychological approaches viewing reconciliation as a more comprehensive phenomenon than only conflict resolution. The article examines the concept of reconciliation and the role of psychology in the study of conflict settlement with the emphasis on social reconciliation and identity change as a core element of building deep stable peace between former rival-parties portraying the existing relevant socio-psychological and political literature on inter-personal, inter-group and inter-state conflict.


Introduction
The concept of reconciliation as an academic field is relatively new. Nevertheless, it attracts scholars' interests from the different research arias. Due to the ambiguity of the definitions, the term reconciliation is quite blurred and requires to provide a clear description. The concept of reconciliation has been known and used in a different direction, starting from political and social science and ending at the interests of psychology. resolution do not erase society's negative sentiments toward the former enemy. States are political actors, and unlike humans deprived of emotions and feelings, in addition, states cannot apologize or forgive, all these actions are a prerogative of human beings who constitute societies. Practically states can normalized relationship fairly rapidly and achieve government-to-government reconciliation, but factually the former adversaries cannot build a stable peace even if they conclude a peaceful agreement and stop military actions. The main reason for such failure is the absence of social reconciliation. States can become friends fast, but societies not. Therefore, nowadays, the study of the reconciliation process slowly has been moved to the social-psychological researches area viewing reconciliation as a more comprehensive phenomenon than only conflict resolution and signing of a peaceful agreement.

Method
The study is based on the content analysis to examine the existing relevant socio-psychological and political literature on inter-personal, inter-group and inter-state conflict, in particular reviews fundamental psychological researches regarded as a basis for the analysis and evaluation of the social reconciliation determining the deep reconciliation states in the post-conflict period.
The article is structured as follows. Firstly, the article introduces the concept of reconciliation with the emphasis on social reconciliation as a core element of building deep stable peace between former rival-parties, besides, portrays the distinctions between conflict settlement, conflict resolution, and reconciliation itself. Secondly, the article examines the existing relevant social, psychological and political literature on inter-personal, inter-group and inter-state conflict, in particular, portrays fundamental researches as well as analyses main contemporary works investigated personal development, interactions between small groups and the study on the large social groups such as states. And finally, the article concludes that the reviewed literature regarded as a basis for the analysis and evaluation of the social reconciliation and should be used in the complex by researches as well as by teachers and students.
The fundamental role of identity change also has been emphasized by Daniel Bar-Tal. He regards reconciliation "as a psychological process, which consists of changes of the motivations, goals, beliefs, attitudes, and emotions of the majority of society members," and emphases that the former adversaries cannot "establish lasting peaceful relations" without such psychological change (Bar-Tal and Bennink 2004:17). Arie Nadler and his colleagues also regard reconciliation as a compound process and divide it into instrumentalist and socio-emotional. While instrumentalist reconciliation is aimed "to change adversarial relations into positive relations that will allow the parties to coexist in a conflict-free environment" and also consists of repeated acts of cooperation for achieving common goals; the socio-emotional reconciliation "is predicated on the premise that recurring episodes of pain and humiliation pose a threat to identity, which often results in preoccupation with feelings of guilt or victimhood that constitute barriers to ending conflict" (Nadler, Malloy and Fisher 2008:6-7). Thus the socio-emotional reconciliation "seeks to remove the emotional and identity-related barriers to the end of conflict through the successful completion of an apology-forgiveness cycle" (Nadler and Shnabel 2008:42).
Generally, reconciliation is rooted in two primary levels of analysis, such as governmental and social. If governmental reconciliation deals with the political interests of the state and refers to peaceful conflict settlement and economic cooperation between former enemies; social reconciliation covers peoples' emotions, beliefs, and attitudes toward each other. According to studies on the reconciliation process mentioned above, the crucial aspect of social reconciliation is a psychological one, which requires identity change as well as changes of beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and emotions toward the former enemy-society. Being a part of identity change, social reconciliation deals with real persons, their feelings and emotions, consequently the reconciliation process between people, societies or even states requires a deep understanding of group psychology as well as personal psychology too.
And if political interests facilitate governmental reconciliation and provoke states to neglect some cultural misunderstandings or historical issues on the way of mutual economic cooperation, people-to-people reconciliation directly depends on political and social discourse created by states toward each other as well as demands the wiliness of societies to adopt such state's politics to move on the direction of acceptance of former enemy-society.
With this in mind, we provide a review of the existing relevant psychological literature, which is salient in the analyses of the social reconciliation process due to its direct impact on identity change. As the reconciliation process explores the relations between the former-enemies states and enemy-groups based on inter-personal conflicts, the study of social reconciliation aimed to analyze not only state-to-state relations but also rooted in people-to-people interaction, wherein personal development as well as contacts between in-group's and out-group's representatives are salient for peacebuilding. Therefore social reconciliation includes three units of analysis such as individual, social and state one, thus it is necessary to portray major works and researches exploring the role of psychology as one of the main factors of understanding of the structure of social reconciliation as well as the possibility of achievement of peace, stability, and security.
Firstly, we represent significant works on personal and small group psychology, since any research requires a strong theoretical basis in order to avoid being incomplete or biased. Thereby the analysis of person-to-person reconciliation cannot neglect the socio-psychological studies on personal development. Secondly, we move to the works exploring the role of psychology in the reconciliation process between large social groups, in particular states.

Psychodynamic Approach and the Role of Culture and Society on Personal Development
The psychodynamic approach includes all the theories of psychology studying human behavior, feelings, emotions and how it relates to early experiences based upon the interaction between the different structures of the personality, conscious motivation and unconscious motivation. In general, the psychodynamic approach focuses on the Freudian psychoanalytic theory of personality and Neo-Freudian theories. Working with physiological foundation of research, the main part of analysis should be related to Sigmund Freud as the founder of psychoanalysis, nevertheless contemporary mostly psychoanalytical researches on reconciliation process rely on the Neo-Freudianism as a group of psychiatrists and psychologists who worked under the influence of Sigmund Freud ideas but extended his theories adding social and cultural directions.
Freud's psychoanalysis (Freudianism) constitutes a systematized explanation of unconscious links and motives through the associative process. Divides the human mind into three levels such as conscious, preconscious and unconscious levels, Freud put forward a model of psychic structure comprising of "ego," "superego" and "id," which is called the theory of personality. All psychic states, all human actions, all historical events, and social phenomena Freud (2014Freud ( ,2015Freud ( ,2017 interprets as a manifestation of unconscious and primarily sexual drives. The concept of the unconscious is central to Freud's theory, and it is unsurprisingly that Freud's followers knowing as Neo-Feudists accept this basic tenet of psychoanalysis, but modify his theory by adding the social approach to it. Actually, the role of small groups and interpersonal communication in identity formation is crucial and undoubted; nevertheless, persons by themselves do not create historical and social norms, values, attitudes, and needs. All these and other substantial elements of social psychology arise from the basis of historical experience, large group experience, cultural and ideological systems where the persons were born and exist. Consequently, by the mean of interpersonal communication in small and big groups, individuals receive the above-mentioned experience. Therefore, psychological analysis of the individual psyche was slowly modified and integrated with social and cultural aspects. A vivid example of such analytical changed had been done by the Neo-Freudian group in the 1920s and 1930s. Adopting the foundations of Freud's theory, they shift key concepts from the basis of sexuality as the main postulate of the human psyche to the social and cultural one. Representatives of Neo-Freudianism believe that the leading role in the human position is played by socio-cultural influences, thus why the works made by such representatives of Neo-Freudianism as Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Erik Erikson are significant for the social reconciliation study too. Later the theory of the unconscious was partially modified by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (2012Jung ( , 2014. He develops the doctrine of the collective unconscious as the second layer of the mind alongside the personal unconscious layer. Regarding collective unconscious as the deepest level of the psyche, he sets archetypes that define the behavior of individuals and large social groups. Also, Carl Jung introduced extraversion and introversion as two main personality traits based on the degree of openness, which direct not only the person's character but his worldview too. For instance, his work on the difference between Eastern and Western thinking (Jung 1969) is remarkable for the understanding of the perception and cognition process, and thereby his psychological contributions are vital for the analysis of the reconciliation process between the enemy-parts represented by the different races and cultures. Alfred Adler (2013) also marks out the crucial role of social influence on person and introduces the role of the social factor as the main determinant of human behavior: the character of a man is formed under the influence of his lifestyle, thus the system of purposeful aspirations developed in childhood force person to achieve superiority, wherein the self-affirmation acts as compensation for feelings of inferiority. Thus, the inferiority complex, term introduced by Adler, plays a key role in personality development and a person's pursuit of power. As for Harry Stack Sullivan, his theory of interpersonal psychoanalysis has a great influence on social psychology initiating numerous studies on the characteristics of perception in interpersonal relations. Modifying and combining psychoanalysis and behaviorism, Sullivan (2013) points the idea of the prior influence of communication on the development of personality paying attention to the formation of images of others, the role of stereotypes in people's perceptions of each other and its influence on the process of communication.
Erik Erikson, a German-born American developmental psychologist, known for his theory of stages of psychosocial development of human beings, develops a new view on the individual relationship with parents within the cultural context in which the family exists. If Freud is interested in the influence of parents on the formation of the child's personality, Erickson emphasizes the historical conditions in which a child's personality Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3450066 formed. Erikson (1959Erikson ( , 1993Erikson ( , 1998 observes that people belonging to different cultures and personality is closely related to the changing features of social prescriptions and cultural system of values. In addition, the Neo-Freudians remains the idea of unconscious emotional motivation of human activity (Freud's pattern) but put forward the statement that psychopathology is relative and specific for each culture. Representatives of psycho-cultural Freudianism Karen Horney and Erich Fromm recognize the role of the unconscious in peoples' behavior, but also emphasize the role of social factors including social ties, interpersonal relations, material, and spiritual culture. In their opinion, the socio-cultural conditions of people's lives equally determine the motives and content of human activities and behavior. For example, Karen Horney (1937Horney ( , 1950 after emigrating to the US in 1932 found that the background of patients' neurotic conflicts in the US is significantly different from the neurotic conflicts of patients in Germany and Austria. The comparison and comprehension of these facts led Horney to abandon the Freudian theory of instincts and recognize the sociocultural conditioning of psychopathology (also see Carley 2015).
Erich Fromm also marks out the importance of the impact of society on human physiological development, behavior, fear, and anxiety. The nature of Fromm's socio-psychological method is the application of psychoanalysis to the study of society as a whole, not only an independent person. According to Fromm (2013), one of the most important factors of human development is a result of the contradiction of the dual nature of man: man is a part of nature and is a social being with reason. The person is likely to come into conflict with society, especially if despotic relations dominate in this society (Fromm 2011). Fromm mixes Freud's ideas with Marxism regarding the person as the product of society and underlines freedom as one of the driving forces of human nature. Fromm's "Escape from Freedom" (1994) reveals the correlation between a person and social influence on humans, in particular how society creates a person's psychological orientations in the world and forms his social character. Besides, he introduces the concept of social character represented by such types as the authoritarian personality and the automaton conformist.
As for conformism, the contribution made by American psychologist Solomon Asch and American social psychologist Stanley Milgram to the understanding of the conformity factor is significant and essential for the analysis of personal development and inter-personal relations. The change of behavior or even opinion due to the social pressure and group influence, is demonstrated by the Asch's conformity experiments (1955) and Milgram's experiment on obedience (2017).
Even if the construction of different psychological and psychoanalytical theories is fairy different and diversified, nevertheless, the Neo-Freudian group preserves the concept of the unconscious, which is regarded as a motivating element of human behavior and cognition. It should be noted that the Neo-Freudian group focuses their attention on social and cultural processes. In their opinion, exactly social and cultural aspects have a significant impact on the occurrence of intrapersonal conflicts between individuals as well as the principled conflictual relations between individuals and society. They regard a person as a complex of interpersonal social relations, which can determine social reconciliation, thus why researches of the peacebuilding and conflict resolution should pay more attention to this theoretical foundation.

Social Psychology and Inter-Group Conflicts: the Studies on Mass Psychology and Nationalism
Despite the presence of a relatively developed framework of individual psychology, examining social reconciliation as a process between small and big groups, the mass psychology theories should be taken into account too. Except for several works such as Dusan Kecmanovic's "The Mass Psychology of Ethnonationalism"(2013), works of Russian researcher Daniil Raygorodskiy (2010), and influential research on collective narcissism and its impact on human behavior and inter-group relations made by Agnieszka Golec de Zavala, Aleksandra Cichocka, Roy Eidelson, and Nuwan Jayawickreme (2009), the field of mass psychology is not well elaborated. Therefore, the study of the psychology of large social groups and its correlation with other disciplines is quite complicated.
On the one hand, the development of social psychology precisely begins with the study of large social groups. In the middle of the XIX century a German philosopher Moritz Lazarus and a linguist Heymann Steinthal distinguish ethnopsychology as an independent science in Germany, they study peoples' psychological character in the cultural and historical frameworks pointing the existence of the spirit of the folk (Smith 2013:208). Later a German physiologist Wilhelm Wundt (2010) also lays the foundations of the study of social psychology as a product of joint existence and interaction of people. The ideas of French sociologists Gabriel Tarde (2011) and Gustave Le Bon (2001) form the basis of the concept of mass psychology. On the other hand, all these studies of the founders of social psychology have a theoretical nature. Only from the significant contribution of Sigmund Freud's analysis of group psychology the field of mass psychology has begun its development. And even if the field of mass psychology is not examined broadly contemporary, Sigmund Freud's "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego" (1922) is still actual and vital, as the work of Elias Canetti (1978) and Serge Moscovici (1998).
As for the most vivid contemporary contributions to the understanding of social conflicts has been done by the Turkish-American social psychologist Muzafer Sherif. Sherif and his colleagues believe that social conflicts arise from intergroup competition for limited resources, not because of the fact of the existence of the groups. Sherif (2010) confirmed that inter-group rivalry leads to conflict, aggressive behavior, and negative stereotyping, while joint activities and common goals can destruct stereotypes and reduce inter-group's differences and in-group favoritism. His Realistic Group Conflict Theory (1966) shows that the inter-group hostility triggered by intergroup interaction, not by individual motivational factors. It is a new step in the understanding of inter-group relations and conflict, but Sheriff 's study does not take into account such psychological characteristics as cognitive and emotional processes regulating different aspects of inter-group interaction. For this reason, the Sheriff 's understanding of inter-group conflict has been reversed from the positions of cognitive orientation.
Thereby, Henri Tajfel, a Polish social psychologist, proposes the cognitive aspects of prejudice in inter-groups relations and founds the Social Identity Theory. Insisting on the importance of cognitive processes in inter-group relations, Tajfel shows the establishment of positive attitudes towards members of a group ("in-group favoritism") and negative attitude to "others" ("out-group hostility") can be observed in the absence of conflict between groups. During the experiments, Tajfel (1970) concludes that a person tends to maintain a particular social identity because people tend to perceive their group better than other groups, and this tendency leads to intergroup bias. Moreover, he finds that only the awareness of belonging to a group as well as cognitive and perceptual processes related to the group can cause inter-group conflict.
Tragic realities and the consequences of the Second World War redirects studies of individual and mass psychology to its correlation with nationalism, inter-group aggression, hostility, and ethnic prejudice. Therefore the combination of the analysis of mass psychology with researches on nationalism becomes burning and extremely necessary for the study of social reconciliation.
One of the earliest works possessed as the basic one is the analysis of the Fascism made by Wilhelm Reich (2013). Beyond that, we cannot neglect Hannah Arendt's contribution and her interpretation of the role of masses and description of the mechanisms of totalitarian movements focusing on Nazi Germany and Communist Russia in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1966). As a German-American philosopher of Jewish origin, a political theorist and historian, she is the founder of the theory of totalitarianism and her works until our days play a huge role in the understanding of the transformation of classes into masses, the role of state's propaganda, mass-state correlations and dichotomy between totalitarian obedience and guilt-responsibility tie (Arendt 2008: 39-56).
The Frankfurt School continues studying the inter-group aggression and correlation between society and individuals under the frameworks of ethnonationalism. Main representatives of the Frankfurt School such as Theodore Adorno (2002), Max Horkheimer (1972, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm, the scholars and the intellectuals of the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University of Frankfurt, combine philosophical concepts with political and sociological. They regard contemporary society as a mass-controlled moving to the standardization of the mind characterized by recessive socio-anthropological changes such as disappearing of the Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3450066 reflection and replacing it with stereotypical reactions and mental clichés. For example, Herbert Marcusethe brightly illustrates the standardization of the mind and its manipulation in his "One-Dimensional Man" (2007), the study of the ideology of the industrial society. As for Erich Fromm, it should be highlighted that he is not only New-Freudianst but also associated with Frankfurt School too. For example, Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik and Daniel Levinson in their book "The Authoritarian Personality" (1993) used the term "authoritarian personality," which was designed earlier by Erich Fromm, as the basis for their study of antisemitism, where the inter-group hostility is interpreted as a personality trait.
Except for western researches on ethnic intolerance and prejudice towards different national and ethnic groups, some Soviet and Russians studies are also essential for the investigations on social reconciliation and should be mentioned too. For example, Soviet and Russian sociologist and psychologist, one of the founders of modern Russian sociological school, Igor Kon, is the first academic who begins to examine the psychology of prejudice. His study on the nature, social origins, and psychological mechanisms of ethnic prejudices based on the analysis of the anti-Semitism play an essential role in the formation of Russian racial psychology (1966: 187-205). Besides, Kon's researches on the ethnic stereotypes and national character are still significant and can contribute to studies of ethnonationalism (1968: 215-229). At the present most leading studies on the psychology of mass behavior, mass (national) trauma and its transmission to the next generation are made by Mikhail Reshetnikov, Professor and rector of Eastern European Institute of Psychoanalysis (St. Petersburg) and Honorary Professor of Vienna University. Combining classical and contemporary psychoanalysis and socio-political approaches, Reshetnikovn (2004Reshetnikovn ( , 2006 analyses the impact of interstate conflicts on individuals and societies on the basis of the case-study of deteriorated relations between Russians and Ukrainians during the Ukrainian crisis as well as its outcomes to person-to-person interactions. One of the most significant contributions to the analysis of public consciousness and its correlation with authorities made by Sergey Kara-Murza, Soviet and Russian science theorist and sociologist. In his book "Manipulation of Consciousness" (2004) he describes the forms and methods of manipulation of public consciousness and pays attention to the influence of social institutions, mass culture, and mass media on the formation of the manipulative semantics and rhetoric.

The Role of Socio-Psychology in Political Research: the Interdisciplinary Approach to the Study of Social Reconciliation between Large Social Groups and the Concept of Trauma
The socio-psychological study of large social groups faces a great number of challenges. A broad range of research methods applied to the study of various processes in small groups usually stands in contrast with the lack of such approaches for analyzing large groups, in particular, social classes, ethnic groups, and even nations. Nevertheless, like small groups or individuals, large groups have specific features determined by their identity construction, particularly by its historical experience, cultural characteristics, social feathers, and state politics.
Specifically, the reconciliation process between states is rooted in passed war conflicts. Historical issues, divided memory, and different representation of the war hostilities generated by inter-state conflicts have a huge impact on social reconciliation between the former enemy-states. And even if states achieve conflict resolution and conclude peace agreement a long time ago, the people-to-people reconciliation can fail.
Generally, the reconciliation process between states remains uncompleted because of traumas generated by societies and state leadership's policy. Nowadays, such terms as political memory or historical memory become crucial in the reconciliation process between states. Currently, such a notion as "trauma" being adopted from psychological studies and integrate into the political sphere. Expanding the limits of researches on political topics, the concept of trauma links psychology with reconciliation studies and requires a deep understanding of the psychological approach.
The discourse of trauma is becoming more and more popular among the representatives of reconciliation process studies. Recently the scholars began to adopt the concept of trauma for the analysis of the impact of war memories on the individual identity as well as shaping social one. As a part of national identity, traumatic memories can politicize the history of state and impact on its interstate relations. However, in some cases, states build the fundament of the historical consciousness of society from the psychological point of view.
In political literature, such psychological choices are divided into "chosen traumas" and "chosen glories" and passed from generation to generation. Analyzing large-group psychology, professor of psychiatry Vamık Volkan (1998:48) reveals that the societies after mass-traumatic events tend to shift their identities to a traumatic one or identify themselves as victors. He examines the psychological links between massive large-group traumas and regression. Besides, primarily focus on how traumas can be manipulated by political leaders and the political ideology of states, and how to deal with such traumatic effects to gain peaceful coexistence in traumatized societies. As a result, Volkan (2014) introduces two main psychological terms such as "chosen traumas" and "chosen glories," where "chosen traumas" connected with the horrors of the past and "chosen glories" represents the triumph of the past as core elements in the process of construction of identity. Both of these elements of largegroup identity provide the state with society's support. Volkan (2008) sees the role of "chosen traumas" in supporting large-group identity and its cohesiveness is more complicated that the role of "chosen glories." Volkan (2004) claims that "chosen traumas" and "chosen glories" "can then be manipulated by political/religious leaders and, associated as it is with an entitlement ideology, may itself become a source for further human tragedy." Thus chosen traumas and chosen glories can be regarded as a myth and become a pillar of war memory and the ideology of the particular state. It also can penetrate not only into society but became a part of the international behavior of the state (also see Gong 200;He 2009;Galtung 200;Bell 2006;Hunt, 2010).
For instance, after the Second World War, Russian-German and Sino-Japanese relations have had a complicated evolution and faced a lot of challenges standing in the way of reconciliation and cooperative relations. Nevertheless, now we can see progressed deep reconciliation and well-established cooperation between Russia and Germany; while Sino-Japanese relations stuck in the process of mutual distrust generating conflicts, distrust and social hostility. One of the main reasons explaining such diversity is rooted in the different representations of the traumatic past, which consequently produce different outcomes providing improvement or deterioration of interstate relations, especially in the case of former enemies. And for instance, despite China and Japan concluded the peaceful agreement and their economic ties are strong, the social reconciliation is fragile, and termly transforms into anti-Japanese movements in China.
Also, there is a quite wide range of researches on the role of traumatic memories and its manipulation in the decision-making process of states. The misuse of history can provide some special changings in foreign policy and impacts on cooperation between states. In 1976 Robert Jevis wrote a classic work "Perception and Misperception in International Relations." Jevis shows how historical events can impact on perceptions of other states and how it can be interpreted by countries. Besides, he explores the influence of "pre-existing beliefs" rooted in historical memory and domestic politics as well as the impact of such beliefs on countries' views of each other. He believes that "decision-makers tend to see what they expect to see…and that these expectations are often driven by the stereotyped lesson of history, analogies." Arthur Stein (182:16) also points attention to misperceptions between states and their impact on the state's behavior on the international scale.
Exploration of perceptions and misperceptions is closely related to one more important topic in International Relations academics relied on psychology such as trust and mistrust between states. The main reason, as Andrew Kydd (2000: 325) explains, is that "mistrust and fear play a crucial role in many explanations of international conflict." Social psychology literature examines how trust-building lies in individuals and leads to a strong sense of group identity, but these researches generally do not focus on the problem of trust-building between states. Nevertheless, International Relations academia and decision-makers recognize the link between trust and reconciliation, and also identify it with "part of the cement upon which peaceful relations are built" (Deutsch 1957:375). There is also some theorizing about trust in the International Relations literature, which usually related to the game theory (Kydd 1997: 371-400;2000: 325-58;Stein 1982: 299-324) or rational choice approach (Hoffman 2006;Luhmann 1979;Sztompka, 1999).
Further American social psychologist James Pennebaker (1997) focuses on the relationship between collective memory, traumatic history, and social behavior. For instance, there is a big amount of influential researches focused on traumatic narratives related to the Holocaust. For example, Jeffrey Alexander and his colleges (2004) propose a theoretical model of cultural trauma as a central pillar for social groups identification emphasizing the role of rituals in collective remembering and identification. Alexander underlines that "cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways" (2012:6).
In contrast, triumphant memories also have an impact on identity formation, thus consequently impact on interstate relations and reconciliation process. Triumph and trauma, as noted by Bernhard Giesen, Professor of Sociology at the University of Konstanz in Germany, represent the historical experience of nation thereby constitute national identity 2015:9). Giesen defines several cores of the constitution of collective identities such as the triumphant hero, tragic heroes, perpetrators, and victims. And all of them can "be considered as an ideal typological field." Nevertheless, "the positions of historical persons within this field are not fixed and immutable -triumphant heroes can become tragic ones, heroes can be turned into perpetrators, and victims, can, later on, get the sacral aura that before was the mark of heroes" (2015:7).
States can use historical representations to escalate the conflict or to foster reconciliation between the former enemies. As Tomas Berger claims "historical memory as it is embedded in the political culture of a nation both conditions and becomes a constitutive element in the concrete interests of states and political leaders and can have far-reaching consequences for the possibilities of conflict and cooperation, war and peace, in the international system" (2012:3). Currently, political scholars elaborate on such topics as politics of memory in different frameworks of remembering historical events. It can be in the form of constructing the feeling of guilt, for instance, "The Guilt of Nations" (2001) written by Elazar Barkan is one of the fundamental books on the role of guilt in interstate relations after the Second World War. While politics of regret clearly examine by Jeffrey Olick (2013) showing the correlation between collective Memory, historical responsibility, and post-conflict societies. Besides, state can choose to implement politics of apology (Rotberg 2006: 33-50;Brinks, Timms, Rock 2006), or choose to forget and forgive the former enemy (Levy and Sznaider 2006;83-102;Helmick and Petersen 2002;. Shriver 1995;Winter and Sivan 2000), or have some kind of historical amnesia (Barkan 2001;Berger 2012).
Nevertheless, states are not a human being and cannot forgive, regret, or forget. But states are constituted of humans, thus why the psychology is required to be counted by political scholars in the study of international conflicts.
Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider (2006:84) argue that "the political significance of forgiveness is contingent upon a set of historical and institutional circumstances that condition the respective meanings forgiveness can (cannot) assume." The main specificity of forgiveness is that it does not only depend on one conflict side's actions. If one of the states is not interested in promoting reconciliation and cooperation with a former adversary, another state cannot get any positive result in peacebuilding even in spite of all attempts that this state makes for being forgiven. Forgiveness can be useful for the normalization of relationships between former enemies in the post-war period, but it is also related to apologies. The main idea of an apology is that it can "help heal the wounds of past injustices" (Blatz and Ross 2009: 231) and can "usefully create the possibility of closure in post-conflict transitions" (Rotberg 2006: 33). Factually it is difficult for a person to recover from traumatic memories without getting an expression of regret from the hostile nation, and as for government-to-government reconciliation, it works similarly. Some countries can get an apology because it is in the interest of the former enemy to feel deep remorse to restore trust in a relationship. Others demand an apology, but there is no hope to get it if the adversary does not regard apology to the victims as a necessary element of reconciliation. role of apology in the process of reconciliation and rebuilding cooperative relationships between states, because "the political and psychological motives that are met by manipulating history can be satisfied by apologizing and atoning for a group's past misdeeds", but mostly it depends upon a certain circumstance in a certain situation, and for some states, apologies are not enough to take a step forward to reconciliation. However, "apologies may have the power to alter historical memories" and facilitate societies to erase negative attitudes toward each others.
Apology plays a huge role in the process of reconciliation and the trust-building process in the post-war period. As Tomas Berger argues, "apologies and efforts at reconciliations seem to lead to more stable interstate relations, in other cases, any progress that has been made remains tentative and short-lived" (2010:10). But it is not the main factor in building normal cooperative relations after conflicts between countries, because apology has to be in combination with other diplomatic and political attitudes (Volkan 2006:117). It has to be a knot of multiple factors supporting the process of apology and its acceptance by another conflict party.
As for the social amnesia as a state's choice in the post-war period, Kumykov Aues, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Department of Philosophy of Kabardino-Balkarian State University claims that "phenomenon of social amnesia is ontologically inscribed in the social reality and becomes apparent in periods of social and cultural crises" (2012:190). In addition, social amnesia leads to disorganize social memory as a symbolic reconstruction of the past in the present. Furthermore, the process of social amnesia can be harmful not only to the concrete society via losing its national identity and sense of correlation across generations, but also has a dramatic effect on interstate relations and delays reconciliation, especially in post-war periods when the peace between former enemies is too fragile. For instance, the confirmations of it can be found in well-elaborated works on Japanese politics of memory and the choice to neglect the historical facts in the construction of Japanese historical consciousness of the Second World War resulting in a lack of trust and worsening of inter-state cooperation (Berger 2012;He 2009;Tian 2002;Wang 2009;Ming 2006;Gong 2001).
Obviously, there are a lot of works covering the role of traumas in historical memory, particularly with the preference to divided societies or West Europe post-war development (Humphrey 2002;Bell 2006;Budryte and Resende 2013;Galtung 2001;Pennebaker 1997;Hunt, 2010) , but there is a lack of researches examining exactly "chosen glories" as a dominant factor in construction of national identity and politics of memory or combination of both these dimensions. Nevertheless, most of the states passed through the war hostilities cannot distinctly identify war as an only traumatic event or only triumphant event. Indeed, cultural trauma researches mostly focus on German and Israel cases as well as on the role of the Holocaust in traumatic narratives in politics of memory and interstate relations. And even if the case of these two nations the trauma concept is deeply explored, the role of trauma in national identity construction and historical consciousness narratives of other countries is less examined in academics and deserves attention to be elaborated more complexly.

Conclusion
Given the abundance of works that directly explore the role of psychology in inter-personal conflicts and the possibility of small groups peaceful coexistence, the absence of similar studies on the interconnection between psychology and state's (large groups) reconciliation process is too sufficient. Particularly, the lack of works exploring the process of identity change as a main part of social reconciliation process in post-war period as well as the impact of politics of memory in the shape of such psychological dimensions as apology, forgiveness, regret and its consequences to the inter-state relations and inter-societies interactions create a big gap in the field of conflict resolution study.
On the other hand, being a complex phenomenon, social reconciliation covers a lot of academic fields and represents as an interdisciplinary concept, thereby it requires a more deep understanding of the personal and social psychology in order to establish trustful relations not only on the state level but between societies too. In addition, studies bringing the psychological analysis of the roots and narratives of politics of memory are too tiny, while exactly the traumatic component in inter-societal relations plays a crucial role and determines the future of peopleto-people reconciliation.
Thus, analyzing the relationships between the former enemy-states in post-conflict, researches are required to rely not only on political approaches but also should use socio-psychological methods. Such a combination of different approaches with the psychological studies can contribute to the formation of strategies for achieving reconciliation in post-conflict periods and avoid reactivation of negative attitudes toward the former enemy-state. In addition, detailed analysis of personal development, social identity, interstate relations from the psychological point of view can reveal more details which can be explored only by political analysis, and thereby psychological approaches should be required to use in next researches on such serious and crucial topic as social reconciliation process.