This seminar will address theoretical and clinical issues that are central to the work with refugees who suffer from complex trauma.
This condition concerns a very small and specific portion of refugees who have been exposed to a series of exceptionally intense experiences, that are often human right violations related to war, torture, imprisonment, rape, etc. Due to certain characteristics of the trauma and its circumstance, they have been unable to integrate these experiences into their internal world and their self becomes profoundly changed.
Most of the ideas that will be presented come from my clinical experience with refugee survivors of torture. However niche, such work is extremely helpful in understanding trauma work and its key principles in the particular case of refugees.
This presentation distinguishes between trauma and complex trauma and uses a perspective that integrates the Jungian model of the self, some concepts of the British object relations theory, and other ideas coming from neuroscience and current knowledge on trauma that are extremely helpful in understanding how and why the self emerge so transformed from these experiences.
Clinical vignettes of psychotherapy with refugee survivors of torture will be presented as examples of what is described theoretically to illustrate the pillars of this clinical work.