Chapter in the book

Therapeutic Care for Refugees. No Place Like Home.

Edited by Renos K. Papadopoulos

Tavistock Clinic Series

London: Karnac, 2002.

 

Refugees, home and trauma1

Renos K. Papadopoulos

 

It is rather remarkable that with all the intensity and breadth of the debate on refugee issues and the extensive psychological work with them there is no substantial examination of the idea of home and its implications for refugees and their workers. Instead, what is more readily available is the plethora of theories on trauma and their applications. Whenever one thinks of refugees, from a psychological perspective, the first association is to trauma rather than to home. Home, after all, is not a psychological concept, as such. Yet, loss of home is the only condition that all refugees share, not trauma. Refugees are defined not as a group of people exhibiting any specific psychological condition but merely as people who have lost their homes. Their primary common characteristic is their lack of home. But what is home and what does it mean for refugees?  How does home affect the therapeutic care and its interactive process?

 

In this chapter, I shall endeavour to explore the significance of home in understanding the refugee situation as well as the impact such exploration can have on our psychological approach to and work with refugees. Moreover, the development of an understanding of home in the context of refugees will provide a new perspective within which to locate the debate on refugee trauma and other related issues, thus arriving at an enriched comprehension of the complexities involved in the therapeutic care for refugees.

 

 

Home and Homer

 

Home is one of the most fundamental notions of humanity. Regardless of the shape or style of home, all human beings have a sense of home (if not an actual experience of, at least, one home) which often evokes powerful feelings, be they positive or negative. Home constitutes one of the central realities that humans share with animals. The whole dynamic of territoriality is directly connected with the locality and feeling of home.

 

If we were to examine the dictionary meanings of home, we would be reminded that home is ‘a village, a town, a collection of dwellings’ (The Oxford English Dictionary). Etymologically, home is connected with the old English word ‘ham’ (as in ‘hamlet’ or ‘Eastham’). This means that one of the first characteristics of home is that it is not restricted to a personal home of one person or one family but it also has a collective connotation. The same dictionary further defines home as ‘the seat of domestic life’, as well as ‘the place of one's dwelling or nurturing, with conditions, circumstances, and feelings which naturally and properly attach to it, and are associated with it’. Therefore, ‘home is not only the place but also the cluster of feelings associated with it’. This aspect is emphasised in additional definitions: ‘A place, region or state to which one properly belongs, in which one's affections centre, or where one finds refuge, rest or satisfaction’. In games, we are reminded, ‘home is the place in which one is free from attack, [as well as] the point which one tries to reach; the goal’. This teleological definition of home should not surprise us, as ‘in various connections’, home also refers to the ‘grave, or future state; the “long” or “last home”’. Finally, home has a rich metaphorical range of meanings. ‘To be at home with’ a subject or somebody means to be conversant and at ease with them; ‘to make oneself at home’ has a similar meaning, i.e. of being at ease and being comfortable with something; and, finally, expressions such as ‘it struck home’ or ‘bring a point/argument home’ refer to home as ‘the very heart or root of a matter’.

 

Although this is, by no means, an exhaustive investigation of the semantic and linguistic dimensions of home, it, nevertheless, reminds us of the wide spectrum of meanings that it conveys – ‘from a physical and geographical community, to a psychological locus of relatedness and communion; from a seat of origins, to the ultimate goal, the place of rest, beyond conflict’ (Papadopoulos 1987, p. 7). Thus, the notion of home, per se, includes ‘a polarity of seemingly opposite experiences, i.e. those pertaining both to beginning and end’ (Papadopoulos 1987, p. 8). The very idea of home includes in itself origins as well as aspired goals. ‘Home is both the perceived locus of origin as well as the desired destination, the goal, the end, the telos’ (Papadopoulos 1987, p.8). Yet, the usual way we tend to comprehend the idea of reaching home is in terms of one direction only -- the regression, the return to the home of origin (physically, geographically or metaphorically), to the location or cultural milieu or psychological space where we were born or grew up.  Thus, when refugees yearn for home, it is important to keep in mind this inherent dichotomous direction that is engendered in their longing and which is likely to be subjugated by the dominant direction of regression.

 

Home and homecoming is such a basic concern of the human experience and history that it has been the theme of many artistic creations – from literature and film, to art and theatre. Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’ seems to have captured some of the key elements and nuances of the home-leaving and homecoming experience in a particularly apposite way. Written nearly 3000 years ago, this epic poem still touches people deeply and its title has become synonymous with the predicament of all those who endeavour to find a home for themselves and, by extension, to any arduous and long pursuit of a goal. 

 

Homer inserts his famous image about home, when Odysseus yearns to see the smoke from his homeland and then die, right at the beginning of the poem, thus setting the theme and the tone. In this way, Homer indicates that ‘The Odyssey’ is about the struggle to get home, or, to use a colloquial expression, it is about Odysseus dying to return home. More specifically, (only 58 verses into the very first chapter of ‘The Odyssey’), Homer says "Odysseus is so sick with longing to see, if it were, but the smoke of his home spiring up, that he prays for death". But is this really what Homer said? This particular phrase comes from the translation by T.E. Lawrence (the famous Lawrence of Arabia).

 

It is important to note that Homer is not using the word ‘home’, as it does not, in fact,  exist in Greek. The closest equivalent word in Greek is ecos (oikos), the root of ecology and economics. Ecos refers more to the house, dwelling, abode as well as to household affairs and housewifery. Out of ecos comes the Latin vicus (quarter or district of a town, hamlet, an estate) which is the root of the English wick (as in Norwich). Homer uses the word gaia (γαια) which simply means earth, soil, land. It is the same word that Lovelock (2000) chose for his theory that our planet earth functions in remarkably inter-regulated ways, as if it was a single organism. So, whereas ecos emphasises the inhabited space, gaia refers more to the land itself. However, both address the relational aspects of the inhabited and uninhabited spaces and certainly both highlight the collective dimensions of home rather than a definition of home as an excluded and isolated space. Thus, the specific Homeric home (gaia) accentuates the concreteness of the collective and relational nature of space and it refers to the actual soil, one’s own land in a sense of inclusion rather than exclusion.

 

Returning to T. E. Lawrence, we may wonder whether his own turbulent and homeless life was connected with his choice of the word ‘home’ instead of ‘land’. Lawrence had no land of his own – either in terms of owning a house (at the time of writing this translation) or in terms of feeling strongly connected with one country. Born in Ireland, grown up in England and committed to Arabia, he did not have any land but, evidently, had a strong yearning for a home. It may be more of a passing interest to note that T. E. Lawrence (then called T. E. Shaw [1932]) began translating ‘The Odyssey’ while in military service in Afghanistan in 1928.

 

Taking this theme further, we note that Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744) renders the same verses as follows:

‘To see the smoke from his loved palace rise,

While the dear isle in distant prospect rise,

With what contentment could he close his eyes!’

 

Pope, settled in his genteel villa in Twickenham, understands gaia as palace and gives the yearning for home a distinct romantic character, inventing even a ‘contentment’ in Odysseus. Evidently, for Pope, the pursuit of home could not have had the dramatic and gutsy feel that T.E. Lawrence gave it.

 

It is interesting to consider three additional translations which are closer to the original Greek with reference to their rendering of gaia. Rieu (1946) renders these verses as

‘and Odysseus, who would give anything for the mere sight of the smoke rising up from his own land, can only yearn for death’,

Fagles (1996) as

‘But he, straining for no more than a glimpse

of hearth-smoke drifting up from his own land,

Odysseus longs to die …’

and Lombardo (2000) as

‘But Odysseus,

Longing to see even the smoke curling up

From his land, simply wants to die’.

 

Although all three translations are closer to the Homeric original in so far as they all use ‘land’ for gaia, still they differ in the overall feel they give to this important passage. These discrepancies and idiosyncratic renderings of home reflect the inevitably unique, distinctive and personal approach to the nostalgic yearning for home that the refugees have. Each person experiences and expresses his or her state of homelessness in a highly personalised way which then is understood and rendered differently and equally idiosyncratically (i.e. closely related to their own personal, professional, socio-economic and historico-cultural contexts) by all those who attempt to understand the needs of that particular refugee.

 

Moreover, using this Homeric passage, it could be said that home is constituted by two opposites: a most tangible and grounded element, the earth, the land, and the most tangible image of an intangible form of home – smoke. This powerful combination of the tangible and intangible, concrete and ethereal, physical and imaginary, inflexible / immovable and flexible / mobile, substantial and indefinable make the image of home a most potent and resilient cluster of psychological dynamics.

 

Staying with the Odyssey, it is worth making another relevant observation (Papadopoulos 1987). The logical sequence of the poem would be that Odysseus arrives home, to the island of Ithaca, at the end of the poem. Yet there is something very curious in the structure of the poem which consists of 24 chapters (called ‘books’). Homer has Odysseus arriving in Ithaca right in the centre of the epic. At the very beginning of book 13 Odysseus finally arrives home. Or does he? He certainly arrives on the shores of Ithaca but he is not even aware where he is. He does not recognise his ‘home’ to begin with. So, whereas objectively, he had reached home, in effect he was not yet at home. This magnificent irony should not be forgotten. It is as if Homer keeps pressing us with painful questions as to how to define home.

 

What then happens in the second half of ‘The Odyssey’ if Odysseus is already home? Evidently, his physical arrival in Ithaca does not end his odyssey, and does not amount to homecoming because not only does he not recognise his homeland but nobody recognises him, either. Home, therefore, cannot be experienced without mutual recognition. Moreover, most importantly, once physically at home, Odysseus had to feel at home. Even after he understood that he had finally landed on his beloved homeland, he still did not arrive home. He had to re-encounter and re-connect with all members of his family, enter his palace, fight the suitors, and regain his royal position. ‘Homecoming is not only about external arrivals and the creation of established homes defined by legal contracts and delineated by geographical boundaries’ (Papadopoulos 1987, p.15). Homecoming is also about the re-establishment of all meaningful connections within one’s own family and own self. These re-connections cannot be taken for granted and are, by no means, easy. Homer makes this point very clearly in so far as it takes another odyssey for Odysseus to re-establish himself in his own home. Odysseus does not slip back into the position, place, role and identity he had left behind, but he has to fight ferociously if not even more so than when on his way to Ithaca. Homecoming is not just a retrospective exercise but also includes a prospective direction. Thus, Homer demonstrates most eloquently that the complete odyssey is not about regression, a passive return to the past, but it includes the totality of the duality of meanings of home - the return and a reintegration, the going back and arrival as well as the achievement of future goals. Moreover, he leads us to experience that the second phase of homecoming can be even more hazardous than the first one. Psychologically, it is subtler and trickier to re-connect with one’s own family members and to risk losing everything, after all the heroic efforts to arrive home in the first place.

 

Following Homer, it could be argued that we could distinguish two kinds of successive moments in the homecoming process: the first is about external dimensions, about the physical arrival where navigation skills, diplomacy, strength, persistence are required to negotiate the external dangers and obstacles. The second moment is of a more internal and psychological nature, requiring more internal resources, stamina, containment, insightfulness and resilience. If the first is about arriving home, the second is about reconnecting with one’s sense of self and accessing the dis-membered parts of one’s personality.

 

 

‘Nostalgic disorientation’ and ‘mosaic substratum of identity’

 

Although refugees do not constitute any one coherent diagnostic category of psychological or psychopathological characteristics, the fact that they all have lost their homes makes them share a deep sense of nostalgic yearning for restoring that very specific type of loss. Nostalgia is the right word to describe this whole cluster of feelings, reactions, hopes, fears, etc. Nostos in classical Greek means ‘returning home’ and nostalgia is the pain that accompanies the feeling of pining to return home. Algos is ache, pain and, therefore, nostalgia is the hurt, the pain, the sickness, the suffering that a person experiences in wanting to go home.

 

To understand this lack as a loss in the ordinary psychological sense is to miss the rich meaning and complexity that the loss of home entails. Papadopoulos (1997a) suggested the term ‘nostalgic disorientation’ to refer to this uniqueness of the refugee predicament. The loss is not only about a concrete object or condition but it encapsulates the totality of all the dimensions of home, as discussed above. More specifically, this totality includes the three sets of binary dichotomous elements, i.e. (a) the two diametrical opposite directions of home which include both prospective and retrospective movements (towards the origins and the goals), (b) the double signification of home in terms of tangible and intangible entities (physical and imaginary), and (c) the two successive moments of the homecoming process (external and internal, physical and psychological, return and reintegration).

 

Refugees sense the impact of this multidimensional, deep and pervasive loss and they feel disoriented because it is difficult to pinpoint the clear source and precise nature of this loss, especially due to its complex and dichotomous nature. What is certain is that refugees have lost their homes; this is a tangible and precise concept and reality, whereas anything else becomes quite disorienting. The term ‘nostalgic disorientation’ was advanced (Papadopoulos 1997a) in order to clarify that this disorientation is enwrapped in a nostalgic sense of deep ache. Refugees never lose their awareness of the actual loss of home; however, what creates confusion and bewilderment is the intricate mixture of these other dimensions which get confused and which generate this feeling of ‘nostalgic disorientation’.

 

However, human beings cannot tolerate ambiguity and tend to create certainty regardless of the amount of distortion involved in doing so. Thus, under the painful influence of this kind of loss, refugees tend to single out specific complaints as the sole source of their unhappiness. Often, these complaints are legitimate but they seem to acquire extraordinary and excessive significance, and they are evidently overcharged with feeling in a disproportional way. These may be focused on insufficiently attended needs connected with housing, schools, benefits, but mostly – physical medical symptoms. 

 

It is as if the absence of home creates a gap in refugees which makes them feel  uncontained and they then look around to fill the gap, to make up for that loss, to re-create the protective and containing membrane of home. Indeed, home provides such a protective and holding enwrapment. This is so because, de facto, most homes provide some kind of continuity that enables co-existence between many opposites: love and discord, distance and proximity, joys and sorrows, hopes and disappointments, flexibility and obstinacy, envy and magnanimity, rivalry and collaboration, loyalty and betrayal, enmity and friendship, similarities and differences, to name but a few.

Within the context and relative permanence of home, one can experience the co-existence of seemingly irreconcilable opposites and this experience creates a special feel of containment that is not usually consciously appreciated.

 

Regardless of how ‘dysfunctional’ families may be, homes can provide that deep and fundamental sense of space where all these opposites and contradictions can be contained and held together. Inevitably, this develops a sense of security, regardless of whatever other traumatic experiences family members may also have as a result of their family interactions. This function of home is most important in minimising or even avoiding archaic and fundamental forms of splitting.

 

It would be reasonable to assume that there is a basic and primary layer, which mostly is not visible or felt, that forms what could be called a substratum of human experience on top of which all other tangible and visible experiences and characteristics are grafted (Papadopoulos 1997b). The very fact that one has experience of a home (regardless of how good or bad, long or brief, it may be) forms part of this substratum that contributes to the establishment of a foundation to being human. Ordinarily, this layer, being so basic and fundamental, is outside the reach of our awareness unless it is disturbed. This is precisely what happens when people lose their homes and become refugees. A primary and fundamental lack develops which imperceptibly takes hold of refugees, in addition to whatever other tangible losses they are aware of and they consciously mourn for.

 

The fundamental sense of home forms part of the core ‘substratum of identity’ which is structured as a ‘mosaic’ and ‘consists of a great number of smaller elements which together form a coherent whole’ (Papadopoulos 1997b, p.14). Other elements of this mosaic substratum, in addition to the sense of home, are ‘the fact that we belong to a country, that our country exists, that we belong to a certain language group and we are used to certain sounds, that we belong to a certain geographical landscape and milieu, that we are surrounded by particular types of architectural designs’ (Papadopoulos 1997b, p.14), that we live within a space permeated by certain smells and tastes, etc. All these form part of a primary sense of human life and can be considered as a fundamental given. Although this mosaic substratum is mostly unnoticeable, it forms the essence of being human and its function consists of providing us with a primary sense of our humanity and a sense of predictability in the course of our lives. In other words, an intact mosaic substratum creates the conditions to develop the ability and confidence to get on with our lives, with the ‘sense of predictability of how human beings behave, of what to expect of life, i.e. how to 'read life', … [as well as an] awareness that certain human values identify us as humans and govern our interactions’ (Papadopoulos 1997b, p.14).

 

Conversely, when this mosaic substratum is disturbed, e.g. when people lose their homes and become refugees, there is bewilderment, a sense of unreality and of an inexplicable gap because people lose something they were not aware they had, in the first place. This bewilderment which, in the context of refugees, is what the ‘nostalgic disorientation’ is about, can create different kinds of reactions (e.g. panic, depression, apathy, suspiciousness, splitting) that can easily be misunderstood and often pathologised not only by the support workers but also by the refugees themselves. It is important to appreciate that disturbance of the mosaic substratum creates a kind of loss that could be characterised as primary, as opposed to all other secondary losses which are of a tangible nature and of which the person is aware.

 

Thus, the main argument here is that loss of home is not just about the conscious loss of the family home with all its material, sentimental and psychological values, but it is of a much more fundamental and primary kind and it creates a disturbance (called here ‘nostalgic disorientation’) which is closer to what has been referred to as ‘ontological insecurity’, ‘existential anxiety’ (Giddens 1991, Laing 1960), ‘existential angst’, or ‘dread’ (Kierkegaard 1957, Sartre 1948). The shared themes of these conditions are a deep sense of a gap, a fissure, a hole, an absence, a lack of confidence in one’s own existence and consequently in ‘reading life’ which leads to a particular kind of frozenness (Papadopoulos, 1997b). This frozenness is often erroneously diagnosed as traumatic dissociation (see below). Thus, the primary loss of home creates the overall syndrome of homelessness as opposed to the security of homeness.

 

 

The inter-related realms

 

Additional characteristics of home are connected with its multidimensionality. The containing capacity of home is the result of the stability that it provides in terms of continuity within a physical and emotional space where intimate relationships develop (regardless of whether they are positive or negative). The fact that these experiences are held within the context of a home creates a sense of constancy and stability. Consequently, what constitutes home is the space which holds these experiences and the positive sense that is derived from them. The feeling of safety may or may not be added to the primary sense of stability; whether a person experiences home as a safe place is different from the primary experience of stability that a home exists. This means that the continuity itself within a certain felt space contributes to the development of a deep sense of reliability about life. Thus, home is the locus where the physical and metaphorical meanings of containment are closely interlinked to a degree that they become inseparable dimensions of the same entity.

 

As such, the home, understood as this particular kind of container, impacts on at least three levels: (a) it can enable the growth and development of individuals within the family, (b) it can regulate the network of inter-relationships within its members as well as their conflicts and disturbances, and (c) it can mediate between these two levels and the outer world, the society, the culture, and the socio-political and economic realities. Thus, we could appreciate home as a  key construct which interconnects three overlapping realms — the intrapsychic, the interpersonal and the socio‑political.

 

It is within the context of the primary sense of home (not necessarily the actual conscious and ongoing experience of one) as a proto-space that these three realms can inter-relate in a meaningful way. Home, as the physical and psychological locus of the family, represents the most tangible systemic expression of the family interconnections among its members and the society at large. Moreover, it constitutes a primary locus where boundaries and limits are experienced and negotiated. External and internal, public and private, social and personal/family, family and individual, me and you, us and them, familiar and the other, all are dichotomies that the home addresses, thus providing a primary experience of how these are construed and negotiated. Again, the point is that home offers the proto-experience or even more precisely, the proto-sense of these crucial dichotomies and the ways that these can be negotiated, regardless of how successfully this negotiation happens in an individual’s life history and experience. The very experience/sense of the existence of these dichotomies matters a great deal, and home is the locus where these are first sensed/experienced. Undoubtedly, the particular way they are experienced will certainly affect the psychological make up of the individual and it will either facilitate a positive personality development or it will leave a negative effect that will mark the individual, possibly for life.  However, the fact that the individual had the sense of them within the context of home will form part of that mosaic substratum of one’s identity and one’s own sense of self.   

 

Although discussing in any detail the theoretical premises of these ideas goes beyond the scope of this chapter, it would suffice to outline some of the basic principles:

 

Basic Principles :

 

1.        Bowlby’s theory of  a ‘secure base’ (1988a; 1988b) provides the foundations for understanding that the continuity of secure bonds between an infant and the parent/s is essential in enabling the child to feel secure and to maintain a balance between seeking proximity and venturing into the unknown outside. The emphasis of this concept, as part of Bowlby’s attachment theory, is on the early interpersonal relationships but one has to accept that home is the primary condition which provides the space for such relationships. Moreover, Bowlby referred to concepts very related to home when he argued that ‘there is a marked tendency for humans, like animals of other species, to remain in a particular and familiar locale and in the company of particular and familiar people’ (1973, p.176). Also, he referred to the idea of ‘home range’ in animals, i.e. the tendency to ‘spend the whole of their lives within an extremely restricted segment’ of ‘earth’s surface’ which is ‘ecologically suitable to them’ (1973, p.177). Finally, Bowlby made the clear distinction between security and safety: ‘a secure base, however much it may lead someone to feel secure, is no guarantee of safety’ (1973, p.216). In other words, the division between the primary sense of security of home and the secondary sense of safety of home is supported by the Bowlbian theories.

2.        Donald Winnicott’s ideas on ‘transitional space’ (1982, 1989, 1992) suggest that there is a psychological space in between the infant and the others which enables the development of intersubjectivity and entrance into the symbolic world. This is a potential space that he referred to as a ‘third area’ which is in between the subject and the object, the inner and the outer, the physical and the psychological, the experiential and symbolic. As such, this idea has attracted attention even by geographers who are interested in the cultural and psychological potentialities of space (Aitken and Herman, 1997). One of Winnicott’s posthumous collection of essays was even entitled Home Is Where We start From (1986). Therefore, Winnicott’s approach lends support to the importance of home with its double signification which includes the physical and psychological dimensions.

3.        Wilfred Bion is particularly known for his astute examination of the very early matrix upon which human experiences are built. It is important to note that at that very early stage of human development, ‘the proto-mental system …[is] one [in] which physical and psychological or mental are undifferentiated’ (1961, p.102). It is this proto-fusion that can be usefully applied to the understanding of home as both a physical and psychological entity. For Bion, the group, as an extension of the family and the place where early experiences with mother are contained and repeated, provides the ground and continuity for intense connections (i.e. pairing, dependence, fight-flight). Therefore, it could be argued that the proto-locus of the group (and by extension of all human) experiences is the home. Moreover, Bion’s original contributions about the nature of space, place, position in relation to constancy and their role in the origin of the early sense of mind, thought, thinking and feeling (e.g. Bion 1965) are highly relevant to the idea of home as, what could be called, a proto-space.

4.        Daniel Stern’s researches into the early infancy processes have suggested that a core sense of self is established as a result of separate networks of repeated experiences becoming integrated. These networks can only take place within a space that ensures that they are indeed repeated. Although he does not refer directly to home or the dimension of space as such, Stern offers a clear account of the early substratum when he clarifies that this ‘core sense of self’  is ‘normally taken completely for granted and operates outside of awareness. A crucial term here is “sense of,” as distinct from “concept of” or “knowledge of” or “awareness of” a self or other. The emphasis is on the palpable experiential realities of substance, action, sensation, affect, and time. Sense of self is not a cognitive construct. It is an experiential integration’ (Stern 1985, p.71).

5.        Jung’s theories of archetypes can provide a useful understanding to the importance of home. Theodore Abt (1983) examined the archetypal roots of man’s relation to his milieu and discussed the idea of the archetype of home, equating it to the ‘archetype of ordered wholeness’ (p.135) which unites both the father and mother archetypes. James Hillman reminded us that for the Romans ‘familia … meant primarily “a house and all belonging to it”’ (Moore 1989, p.202) and thus home and family are inexorably interlinked. The Jungian (and post-Jungian) contribution to our understanding of home emphasises the ways that the psychological and physical dimensions of the archetype (Jung referred to this as the ‘psychoid’ nature of the archetype) can enable the differentiation of personality from that early archaic potentiality; more specifically, this potentiality can be fostered in the psychological and spatial environment of home. Jung’s insights into the inter-definition between intrapsychic and collective dimensions can throw much light onto our understanding of home.  

6.        Gaston Bachelard’s ‘poetics of space’ offers a series of elegiac insights into the meaning of house as a home. Choosing detailed facets and images of the house, he notes that these ‘house images move in both directions: they are in us as much as we are in them’ (Bachelard 1958, p.xxxvii). This interchange between us, our inner world, our imagination and the house as home and as intimate space is developed most aptly by Bachelard. Home belongs to us and we belong to home. Home creates us and we create home. Approaching space in an imagistic way, which reminds us of Jung, Bachelard shows how the setting is not a passive background but an integral part of the picture and of our own formation.

7.        Gedo and Goldberg (1973) provided a hierarchical model of therapeutic interventions  which they connected with a model of ‘progressive and regressive modes of functioning’ (p.73). Instead of assuming a fixed and static developmental hierarchy, their model was based on the principle that ‘every individual can traverse the whole gamut of development’ (p.158). For the first two lowest modes of functioning, Gedo and Goldberg proposed that what is required is not the use of interpretation but ‘the utilization of extensive parametric techniques’ (p.161) which included ‘the regularity of therapeutic sessions’ (p.161) and ‘the continued availability of a reliable object, that is, the presence of a real person or even of a reliable setting’ (p.162). This means that the most basic form of therapy for individuals who are functioning at a very basic level (at a given period in their life) is the provision of a safe and reliable environment which is what home represents.

8.        The French psychoanalyst Didier Houzel (1996) introduced the term psychic envelope ‘to denote any structure that performs a boundary function between an inside and an outside and thereby allows the elements contained within it to be included in one and the same whole. The concepts of container, psychic skin, skin ego and psychic envelope are in my view equivalent. Each stresses a different aspect of one and the same entity’ (p. 903). Then, more specifically, Houzel developed the concept of a family envelope by which he meant ‘a group structure common to all members of a family, which provides for the succession and differentiation of generations, permits the complementarily of the maternal and paternal roles, guarantees the constitution of the basic and sexual identity of each child and, finally, contains all the members of the family in a single filiation and causes them to share one and the same sense of belonging’ (p.905). For Houzel, ‘Belonging and connectedness are properties common to the individual psychic envelope and the family envelope. The kind of belonging concerned here is the belonging to the family group, which may be seen as a space delimited by its envelope’ (p.906). Houzel’s ideas about ‘family envelope’ are most relevant in understanding the concept of home as a psychological and psychotherapeutic structure.

 

This is a sample of theories that can assist in providing a connection between relevant psychological theories and the ideas presented here. In addition to the psychological theories, there is a host of philosophical contributions that can throw illuminating clarity on the development of a wider understanding of home. For example, Sartre distinguished ‘consciousness of self’ as an earlier form of ‘knowledge of self’ (1948) and argued that ‘distance’ created consciousness; although he did not emphasise the spatial dimensions of this distance, it could be argued that it plays a central role. Heidegger’s key notion of ‘heimat’ (home, homeness) addresses home in a very similar way as it is done in this chapter. More specifically, Heidegger has the notion of ‘taken-for-granted-at-homeness’ which is destroyed by the ‘dread’ as a condition when we lose the familiarity the world has for us. This dread creates the state of ‘not-at-home’ which he qualifies as ‘The not-at-home must be grasped as the more original phenomenon in the existential-ontological sense’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 189).  This means that without the primary ‘taken-for-granted-at-homeness’ state, a serious disorientation takes place which is of a fundamental existential and ontological nature. 

 

Once we accept that home occupies a pivotal position in our approach to psychological development, then a new epistemology emerges where the sharp boundaries between inner and outer, physical and psychological, individual and collective lose their impermeability. This perspective is strikingly similar to the very dynamics of most therapeutic processes.

 

 

Home and stories

 

Whenever the home is lost, all the organising and containing functions break wide open and there is a possibility of disintegration at all these three levels: at the individual - personal level; at the family - marital; and at the socio-economic / cultural-political levels. Seen in this context, the homecoming nostalgia acquires additional dimensions and refers to the yearning not only for a return to a physical house but also for a psychological need to re-establish that unique container within which all opposites of all these three levels can be held together.

 

Thus, thinking about families outside the context of their own home or their condition of homelessness is like thinking of a disembodied principle. Families and homes are inseparable entities. That is why considering the predicament of refugees in the light of their condition of homelessness is central to our understanding of families as potentially containing units. Homelessness is a state that encompasses not only physical and material dimensions but it contains psychological and existential characteristics, as well.

 

An additional important characteristic of home is that it grounds and provides coherence to the story of families. Each family has a story, its own story which does not necessarily coincide with an external historical account one may give of it. Like all stories, it consists of many more smaller stories of specific facets of the family. This big family narrative accounts for the most important milestones in the history of that particular family and amounts to being the connecting tissue among the various perceptions and feelings family members have about themselves and each other in the context of their history and home space. In Greek istoria means both history and story. Istoria comes from the verb istoro which simply means to tell, to narrate what one has learnt. Thus, the Greek language implies that history is nothing but one narrative, one story as told by a group of people; no illusions of any official objectivity in this definition. History is just another story, another narrative. Nevertheless, the stories families tell about themselves and their tribulations provide them with a sense of coherence and continuity, a way of containing good and bad times, heroes and villains. A coherent story enables family members to make intelligible their own experiences of themselves and of others, it facilitates the negotiation of changes and makes predictable the behaviour and moods of family members. Inevitably, family stories are anchored around the home. Conversely, when the home is taken away from the family, the very condition of homelessness needs to be included in their story and this is not always an easy task.

 

Therefore, family stories express the interconnection between the personal, family and wider parameters within the context of a sense of home that enables the holding and containing of all opposite and contradictory elements that threaten to disrupt the sense of continuity and predictability. It is this very continuity that is disrupted when people lose their homes and become refugees and it is precisely this dimension that therapeutic care for refugees should foster.

 

 

Refugee trauma

 

Undoubtedly, the predominant way that refugees are viewed today is in terms of the trauma theories. Although there are numerous and varied theories about the related themes of conflict, violence, power, identity, ethnicity, trauma, etc, it seems that there is unanimity about one prevailing belief according to which almost everybody affected by war experiences and political oppression is ‘traumatised’. The term ‘trauma’ has lost its specific psychological meanings and has become synonymous with painful experience; there is a widespread tendency to call ‘traumatic’ most of the disrupting, distressing, disturbing, unsettling, tragic and hurting experiences. Whatever sharpness its psychological definitions were attempting to provide has been lost since the word ‘trauma’ has been appropriated by journalists, politicians, social commentators, and demagogues who have been using it indiscriminately to render respectability to their claims. It sounds more authoritative, respectable and convincing when one says that a person had been ‘traumatised’ by an event, rather than saying that the person had been ‘shaken’ by it. The power of the word ‘trauma’ lies in its widespread (and seeming) intelligibility which, of course, is deceptive because if pressed, those who use it would find it difficult to define what precisely they mean by it.

 

This means that there is a prevalent and indeed dominant discourse in society which makes people hold the conviction that when a person is exposed to adversity automatically he or she is traumatised. Inevitably, refugees have not escaped this indiscriminate precept and hence there is a particularly strong belief that most refugees have been traumatised.

 

Moreover, the ‘refugee trauma’ discourse tends to be restrictive because it emphasises only one segment of the wide spectrum of the refugee experiences. This spectrum could be divided into at least four phases which have been identified as

 

-          ‘Anticipation’: when people sense the impending danger and try to decide how best to avoid it,

-          ‘Devastating Events’: this is the phase of actual violence, when  the enemy attacks and destroys, and the refugees flee,

-          ‘Survival’: when refugees are safe from danger but live in temporary accommodation and uncertainty, and

-          ‘Adjustment’: when refugees try to adjust to a new life in the receiving country

(Papadopoulos, 2000b; 2001a; 2001b).

 

Unmistakably, the ‘refugee trauma’ discourse privileges the phase of ‘devastating events’ and blatantly downplays or even ignores the consequences of the adverse nature of the other phases. For example, Edith Montgomery (1998) in a large study with refugee children from the Middle East found that the most frequent specific types of violence-related events or circumstances were ‘lived in a refugee camp outside the home country’ (92%) and the most important risk indicators for anxiety were again ‘lived in a refugee camp outside home country’.  This means that the worst experiences these children had were during the phase of Survival and not during that of Devastating Events. As we know, a large number of refugees may not have even experienced that phase at all, fleeing without having any direct violent contact with the enemy. Yet, the tyrannical nature of the ‘refugee trauma’ discourse induces both refugees and workers to veer towards that direction, masking the painful impact of all the other phases.

 

 

Trauma

 

The literature on the nature, aetiology, diagnosis, socio-political parameters of trauma, especially with reference to refugee trauma, is enormous and the debates endless (e.g. Abramson 2000; Ager 1999; Arroyo and Eth 1996; Bagilishya 2000; Bentovim 1992; Bertrand 1998; Bloom 1997; Bracken and Petty 1998; Brunner 2000; Caruth 1996; De Jong and Clarke 1996; Eisenbruch 1991; Friedman and Jaranson 1992; Gorman 2000; Herman 1992; Joseph and Yule 1997; Kalsched 1996; Klain 1992; Kristal-Andersson 2000; LaCapra 2000; Lebowitz and Newman 1996; Marsella 1992; Marsella et al. 1996; J.R. Montgomery 1998; Muecke 1992; O’Brien 1998; Papadopoulos 2001a, 2001b; Rechtman 2000; Shephard 2000; Summerfield 1999, 2001; Tedeschi and Calhoun 1995; van der Veer 1994; Woodcock 1994, 2001; Yehuda and McFarlane n.d.; Young 1997; Yule 1999; Zarowsky 2000; Zarowsky and Pedersen 2000; Zur 1996). Is it then at all possible to attempt to address anything about truama afresh? What is trauma and how can we understand its connection with refugees? First of all, trauma, in Greek, means wound, injury and it comes from the verb titrosko - to pierce. However, in a recent etymological investigation (Papadopoulos 2000b; 2001a; 2001b).) it was found that the root verb is teiro ‘to rub’ and, in this context, in ancient Greek it has two meanings: to rub in and to rub off, to rub away. Thus, according to the original definition, trauma is the mark left on a person as a result of something being rubbed onto him or her. Then, depending on the way that the rubbing took place there are two different outcomes. More specifically, when a powerful and intense experience is rubbed in or onto a person, the ‘trauma’ could be either an injury (rubbed in) or a new life, where the person can start with a clean slate and with the previous priorities erased (rubbed off).

 

The first meaning of trauma is well known and it is the one privileged by the ‘refugee trauma’ discourse; although prima faciae the second one may appear puzzling, it is not unfamiliar to those who work with refugees. The ‘rubbing off, away’ meaning of trauma refers to the not uncommon reaction people also have following a difficult and intense experience, when they realise that, despite the excruciating pain, disorientation, disruption, etc, their lives were also marked by a renewed sense of priorities and meaning. Needless to say, the ‘refugee trauma’ discourse creates no space for any indication of the second meaning to emerge. Perforce, this imperceptible skewing leaves trauma firmly located within pathological parameters. 

 

Left within an exclusively pathological context, trauma creates further concerns. Essentially, trauma, according to the ‘refugee trauma’ discourse, is a linear concept which implies a clear causal-reductive relationship between external events and intrapsychic consequences. As such, it ignores systemic complexities such as the relational nature of the events’ impact among family, community and ethnic group members, as well as the effects of the wider societal discourses which colour the meaning, emphasis and quality of events and experiences. Ironically, as trauma tends to polarise positions and reduce complexities to simplistic formulae within individuals and groups, so does the refugee-trauma discourse impose a simplistic connection between the events and psychological experience.

 

This is an important consideration which should mobilise our epistemological awareness to discern the various discourses that get intermingled around this most delicate issue. As argued elsewhere (Papadopoulos, 1998; Papadopoulos and Hildebrand, 1997), under the pressure of the unbearable pain and multiplicity of losses in these circumstances, we tend to confuse at least three sets of discourses: moral and ethical, clinical and pathological, with socio-political and historical ones. The usual result is that we tend to confuse the justified abhorrence of the atrocities (which are considered ‘the cause’ of the trauma) by pathologising the very persons who survived them. However paradoxical this may be, this is usually the case. In our effort to express our justified condemnation of the individuals, groups and policies that lead to political oppression and crimes against humanity, we offer as ‘proof’ the fact that people have been ‘traumatised’ by these despicable actions. In doing so, we ignore all psychological considerations of how people process experiences and, unwittingly, we end up doing violence to the very people we want to help. Thus, we tend to psychologise political dimensions and pathologise both evil actions as well as human suffering (Papadopoulos, 1997b; 1998; 2000a; in press; in 2002c).

 

This argument should not give the erroneous impression that the refugee suffering is either ignored, underestimated or even idealised. On the contrary, once we locate it in the context of clearly delineated but interacting systems, we can proceed in a more prudent way to address the refugee predicament.

 

 

PTSD and ‘early aggressive phantasies’

 

The idea of refugee trauma is based on a relatively recent new understanding of trauma. Following its psychoanalytic debut in the psychological literature, trauma was losing the centrality of its importance when the American Psychiatric Association included the category of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in its ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’ in 1980. It has been argued that the revival of trauma theory was due to three factors, (a) the aftermath of the Vietnam war, (b) the increasing awareness of the prevalence of child sexual abuse and (c) the concurrent attack on Freud’s abandonment of the seductive theory (Papadopoulos, 2002c). There is no doubt that the PTSD diagnostic category has enabled the identification of a distinct syndrome which was previously ignored. One of the main arguments for its introduction has been that had the knowledge of PTSD existed during the World War I, many soldiers who were executed for cowardice or desertion would have been spared and, moreover, helped with their traumatic reactions, instead.

 

Essentially, PTSD is a medical concept because it focuses on the symptoms of one individual; moreover, these symptoms are a mixture of psychological and somatic reactions. As such, PTSD neglects the collective parameters of the experience as well as the wider socio-political context within which the stressor factors have been produced. Much has been written about the advantages and disadvantages of this category as well as the limitations of its applicability cross-culturally  (e.g. Bracken and Petty 1998; Eisenbruch 1991; Friedman and Jaranson 1992; Marsella et al 1996; Zarowsky and Pedersen 2000). One of the main dilemmas facing clinicians working with traumatised individuals as a result of political oppression and violence is that the psychological reactions are part of a wider response to these socio-political events and taking the pathological-sounding symptoms out of their context we may distort the unique position individuals adopt in relation to these violations. Moreover, even from a solely psychological angle, traumatic responses do not always need to be classified as psychiatric ‘disorders’ (which is what the PTSD stands for). For example, Joseph, Williams & Yule (1997) developed a perspective within which they viewed the PTSD symptoms not as exclusively pathological but as covering a continuum ranging from normal adaptation to pathological conditions.

 

Regardless of its justified critiques, what should not be forgotten is that PTSD is a useful category and still serves a useful purpose in identifying acute reactions that require specialist attention. However, regardless of how PTSD is defined, it remains a psychiatric category based on the reactions to external events whose socio-political nature is ignored.

 

Moreover, by placing the emphasis on the external reality, PTSD fails to account for the intrapsychic factor. In other words, the field of psychological and psychiatric treatment to people suffering from political violence and oppression seems to be polarised between two extremes: on the one hand, there is the school of thought (where PTSD seems to belong) according to which the experienced trauma is considered to be a response to external events and, on the other hand, there is the (predominantly psychoanalytic) approach which emphasises the intrapsychic dynamics and early personal history without having a coherent way of incorporating the external factors (e.g. the phases of the refugee trauma, outlined above) in their theory.

 

Martha Bragin has recently developed a new approach which attempts to combine both perspectives. In her doctoral dissertation at the University of New York (2001), she proposed that the persistence of traumatic reactions well after the external events occurred could be due to the fact that these events reactivate repressed early aggressive phantasies. Based on the Kleinian view of early aggressive phantasy, she argues that

 

‘Exposure to extreme violence, rather than feeling overwhelmingly foreign, feels frighteningly familiar to survivors. This sense of familiarity is the result of an unconscious awareness of similar material in phantasy early in life. Sights of death and dismemberment in particular, and scenarios of sadism and torture as well, represent enactments in the real world of the early aggressive phantasy that, according to Klein, is universal in human development (1927, 1928). It is repressed, however, by the end of the first year of life’ (Bragin 2001, p. 26).

 

By combining the early infantile phantasy with current external events, Bragin attempts to integrate both approaches. Moreover, according to the original Kleinian views, these phantasies are not necessarily pathological as such – they are part of normal human development and therefore, the traumatic reactions do not need to be pathologised. 

 

 

Medical traumatology, frozenness and storied community

 

Returning to the idea of trauma as ‘wound’, it may be useful to ponder on an important recent development in medical traumatology. Medical specialists have become aware of the puzzle that if left unattended and in cold conditions, severely traumatised individuals did not bleed to death as previously expected. This phenomenon was particularly evident during the war in the Falkland islands when soldiers with multiple and severe wounds were left alone for a long time in the cold. Despite predictions, the death rate of these soldiers was unexpectedly low, and after much research it was found that the cold conditions enabled the body to develop its own self-healing mechanisms. This means that our impulse to wrap up a wounded person paradoxically prevents the body from attending to the trauma by activating its own self-healing mechanisms. This finding has radicalised the field of medical traumatology and the new approach attempts to facilitate rather than block the organism’s response by, inter alia, introducing measured hypothermia.

 

This development should be most instructive and indeed inspirational for therapists dealing with psychological trauma, too. It could be argued that it is important to position ourselves as therapists in a specific way which enables us to be aware of both the pain, disorientation and vulnerability of refugees as well as of their inherent resilience as individuals, as families, as groups and as communities. It is only through this re-positioning that we can facilitate the activation of self-healing mechanism. Thus, by containing both potentialities implied by the dual definition of trauma (as wound and as an opportunity for a fresh start in life) we can empower the survivors to facilitate their own healing. If we fail to do this, inevitably we will lock the refugees in pathological positions with dire consequences.

 

The hypothermia image could have additional meaning for and application in working with refugees. Under conditions of deprivation, and with a multiplicity of losses, individuals, families and communities seem to ‘freeze up’ and the repertoire of their feeling, perceiving and functioning becomes restricted. This is the ‘frozenness’ referred to in connection with the ‘nostalgic disorientation’ above; externally, it could have all the symptoms of a dissociative state and, in a sense, it is one. However, on closer examination, it could be discerned that it is more the result of the primary loss of home rather than of the long list of the secondary ad tangible losses.

 

This state of frozenness (Papadopoulos, 1997a) can be understood either as a pathological condition and consequently treated as such, or it can be appreciated as a temporary, emergency and indeed an appropriate response that an individual, family or community resorts to in order to ensure survival. In other words, we can either perceive it as an abnormal reaction or as a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances. In the state of frozenness, an individual, family and community limit their activities to the bare essentials and conserve energy which helps them develop a reflective and meditative stance. Moreover, this psychological hypothermia can limit the damage done and also activate the self-healing mechanisms. This temporary withdrawal can provide unique vantage points from where to review and reassess their lives, their past, present and future; it may also assist them by allowing them to digest the impact of their losses, by creating the respectful stance to mourn the dead, by enabling them to regroup and direct their energy more appropriately. All this activity usually happens in an unnoticeable way, if the right conditions and circumstances can contain the disruptive potential of the primary loss of home. In effect, all this imperceptible work could be understood as a reworking of their own life and community stories. However, if support workers and other therapists (or the refugees themselves) were to panic and see this important phase only as an unhelpful and indeed pathological disorientation rather than an expression of the ‘nostalgic disorientation’, the opportunity for re-orientation is then likely to be lost. Instead, everybody involved (refugees and helpers) would seek impulsively the comfort of covering the pain up with the blanket of active professional help, thus blocking the activation of self-healing processes.

 

Within the repertoire of every community there are narratives of how the sanctioned space for this kind of frozenness can be developed and maintained as well as how it can enable healing and further growth whilst minimising damage. Therefore, therapists could have the additional task of enabling such stories to emerge and flourish instead of imposing our own psychological theories. Enabling the families and communities to re-member their dismembered stories could restore the self-healing of families and communities, thus transforming them from homeless communities to ‘storied communities’ with all the resultant self-therapeutic dynamism (Papadopoulos, 1999b). Without masking the negative and disturbing consequences of homelessness, communities can also reconnect around stories and community narratives of overcoming adversity. Individuals, families and communities can restructure themselves and their inter-relationships, they can rebuild old and construct new relationships in sharing narratives of pain and resilience. In short, they can recreate the primary conditions of home.

 

All systems have a dual need for both stability and change and if therapists were to only keep attempting impulsively to change everything that does not conform to our own theoretical models of normality, we are likely to contribute to the further destabilisation of the system. Respecting the positive potentiality of therapeutic frozenness can strengthen the stability of a system, thus balancing out and counteracting the enormity of changes that refugeedom has produced.

 

Frozenness does not imply pathological traumatic dissociation, although certain functions, feelings and connections may temporarily be suspended as part of the emergency phase that requires concentration on the maintenance of a limited range of vital functions. Conserving resources and lowering the level of overall functioning would indeed be an appropriate response. However, if the refugees themselves or their workers/therapists do not appreciate this positive function of frozenness, a pathological connotation will be offered instead. This specific kind of frozenness does not imply paralytic passivity, at least on the therapists’ part. Instead, it can promote the stance of ‘therapeutic witnessing’ (Papadopoulos 1997b; 1998; 1999a), as opposed to the active attempt to change things. This stance has been found to be particularly valuable in these circumstances (Blackwell 1997, Papadopoulos 1997a; 1997b) because it enables and empowers individuals, families and communities to re-story and restore themselves by reconnecting with their totality rather than focusing exclusively on the devastating impact of secondary losses.

 

Moreover, ‘therapeutic witnessing’ can create the appropriate warmth that can rekindle the process of ‘thawing’. ‘Thawing [in this context, as well as in general] is a delicate process which may damage the frozen item if not used appropriately’ (Papadopoulos, 1997, p.15). The mutuality of this kind of witnessing can re-member the images of home along with their complex multidimensional interconnections. This is a direct opposite process to the sterile polarisation and oversimplification which is created by the condition of homelessness and the linearity of trauma. In the process of thawing, it is possible for refugees to acknowledge not only the regressive tendencies of nostalgic disorientation but also their progressive and prospective direction and value. Homecoming then is not only about the physical return back to their geographical homes but also the reconnection with all the complexity of the dimensions, layers, directions and everything else that home, in its primary sense, can provide. Thus, by respecting the positive potentiality of the temporary frozenness, through re-storying which is enabled by the therapeutic witnessing, refugees can reconnect with and develop further the richness that the entire ecology of the primary process of homeness can offer.  

 

 

Other refugee perspectives

 

As emphasised repeatedly, the only criterion that defines refugees is the external fact that they have lost their homes. Therefore, their very identification and definition as refugees is an undeniable external and historical fact. However, the very term refugee has so many connotations (from psychological to political) that refugees inherit a host of other characteristics that they are not always aware of. This can be expressed succinctly in discerning two main perspectives (Papadopoulos, 2001a): the ‘essentialist’ perspective reminds us that refugees have sustained a multiplicity of actual losses and they have been exposed to many painful situations; this perspective helps us realise the complexity and the multidimensional nature of the refugee situation – regardless of whether they have any psychological needs, refugees definitely have financial, medical, educational, social and numerous other concrete needs that should not be underestimated. In addition, a ‘constructivist’ perspective focuses on the ways that refugees define themselves, their needs and their very own experiences in the context of the wider socio-political constructs. Moreover, the constructivist perspective assists us in appreciating the wide range of perceptions, feelings, attitudes that others (including aid and support workers, therapists and administrators) have about refugees. In addition, each group of refugees at each given time in each receiving country is faced with different sets of feelings by the local population depending on the wider socio-political contexts, interests, and media coverage. This perspective emphasises the multifaceted influences that shape the refugee experience; how they feel they are experienced and how they experience themselves.

 

Against this background, it would be useful to keep in mind the following:

 

- As being a refugee is not a pathological condition, what is the therapists’ entitlement? How should therapists position themselves in relation to them, to their difficulties and to the network of other professionals?  Can we intervene if not asked to do so? How can we respond to their undeniable suffering without pathologising it? How can we appreciate their predicament without psychologising its political dimensions? Although there are no clear and general recipes to these answers, bearing them in mind can allow us to create appropriate parameters for our work (Papadopoulos, 1999a).

 

- Relationships within refugee families undergo radical transformation and role reversals are not uncommon. For example, as children usually assimilate faster than their parents, they acquire new responsibilities (even looking after their parents); mothers tend to attain new authority due to their involvement with their children (at school and in the neighbourhood) and fathers seem to become more isolated as they lose their traditional position - they become more vulnerable especially without the authority of the employment status they had in their home country (Papadopoulos, 1999a; Papadopoulos and Hildebrand, 1997). Therapists cannot afford to ignore these radical changes of roles and relationships in the families; these changes produce confused images of home and contribute to deepening the confusion of the primary loss of home. 

 

- It is usually considered that refugee families are torn between two ‘oppositional discourses’ with regard to their loyalty and overall orientation (Papadopoulos and Hildebrand, 1997). On the one hand, they wish to remain loyal to the culture, language, traditions of their home country and to honour the past but, on the other hand, they want to grasp the opportunities open to them in the receiving country and to build the best possible future in their new home. Moreover, this conflict is often perceived as being exhibited between the age divide in the family, with the older generation holding on to the past whilst the new generation races forth, accepting the new life and being scornful of the ways of the old country. Research has shown that this view is not entirely true and the situation is more complex than that: ‘far from having detrimental effects, the oppositional discourses may enrich and assist families to live more creatively’  (Papadopoulos and Hildebrand, 1997, pp. 232-233). Also, the oppositionality does not follow rigidly the age divide. More specifically, it was found that the family as a system seems to assign roles to family members, almost arbitrarily, so that at every given time there is a relative balance between both sides. Thus, although grandparents by and large are the holders of the traditional values and customs of their home country at the same time they were found to do their utmost to assist their grandchildren to do well and make the best of the opportunities in their new country. ‘Grandchildren were also not exclusively oriented towards their new world in the UK but had moments when they privileged their pre-refugee world’. For example, ‘a teenage girl, although she seemed preoccupied with fitting in with her school friends in appearance, mannerisms, music preferences etc, also spent time with her grandmother learning to cook … specialities’ from their home country (Papadopoulos and Hildebrand, 1997, p.227). This means that it is possible to avoid following stereotyped perceptions and enable refugee families achieve creative ways of interacting.

 

- One of the most difficult dynamics in working with refugees is the closed system of victim-saviour that refugees and therapists can easily co-construct. Essentially, if the refugee is pathologised and seen exclusively as just a victim, invariably the therapist is likely to occupy the saviour role. However, this system is not limited to the dyad of victim-saviour because saviours do not save victims without an attempt to protect them from their violators. Thus, the triangle of victim-saviour-violator tends to keep perpetuating itself creating endless variations with different people in the same roles. The most common variation is for the ‘victim-saviour couple to keep on producing increasingly more enemies that they will need to defend themselves against, such as the managers of the therapists’ services and other individuals and bodies that do not offer the kind of unconditional support that the couple expects and demands’ (Papadopoulos, 2001, p. 8).

 

 

‘Something you somehow haven't to deserve’

 

In his poem The death of the hired man Robert Frost has a character asking for a definition of ‘what you mean by home’. The answer comes as follows:

 

'Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in.'

 

                                'I should have called it

Something you somehow haven't to deserve'

(Frost 1955, p.38)

 

This awkward sounding sentence conveys most expressively and movingly the essence of home as a primary condition where one’s presence and entitlement are taken for granted. Unquestionably, one does not have to earn the right to be at home. One should not be required to achieve anything to gain the right to be at home. Home is where one is.

 

Yet, refugees have to struggle to regain their homes. Their struggle is arduous and lengthy at many levels: at a political level with various governments and organisations to enable their repatriation, administratively and legally in the receiving country with  various authorities in order to gain their rights, psychologically with themselves to keep in a fit state to make sound decisions and choices. The pain and nostalgic disorientation are considerable and the resultant confusion creates pressure on refugees and on all those who work with them to simplify the multifaceted and multidimensional complexity of being a refugee and to focus on tangible goals. This is a necessity and it needs to be done; however, if this is all that is done and if the pain and complexity are abandoned then there is a danger that the primary level of disorientation is not addressed. Any intervention which does not take on board the positive potentiality of the frozenness of the nostalgic disorientation is likely to adversely affect the activation of resilience and self-healing mechanisms in individuals, families and communities.

 

Trauma is not just an intrapsychic condition which is created in a linear and causal-reductive way by external violent events. It is also a social construction and it fits within wider social constructs which also permeate the function and structures of our mental health services that are set to address the refugee difficulties. This means that certain types of service provision and referring networks may also perpetuate pathologised versions of the refugee trauma discourse. Unless the primary and indeed archetypal nature of the homecoming process is included in the conceptualisation, planning and implementation of such interventions, the service provision is likely to be skewed towards pathologising models of trauma. In other words, what is important to emphasise is the inclusion of home as an important psychological and psychotherapeutic category (and not just as an epiphenomenon) in our therapeutic care for refugees. There is plenty of evidence in the existing psychological theories to enable us to develop further this idea.

 

Ultimately, human suffering is not always synonymous with psychological trauma and discerning the delicate balance between therapeutic intervention and therapeutic witnessing is not easy. If the homecoming pursuit is not only retrospective but also prospective, then therapeutic care for refugees has the potentiality of helping them to gain much more than they already deserve.