Lives Elsewhere: Migration and Psychic Malaise

ISBN-13: 9781855754652 / Angielski / Miękka / 2006 / 234 str.

Natale Losi; Brett Shapiro; Franceline James

Opis

Born from the author's desire to write a simple and clear account of complex material based on ethnopsychotherapy and migrations, this book aims to clarify some key questions, rather than serve as a definitive text.

The book opens by considering the relationship between the traumas attached to emigration and possible psychological conflicts that the individual had experienced before migrating. The use of fable and metaphor is proposed as a valuable means of honoring the complex, two-world experience of the immigrant or refugee. In particular encouraging a client to act like a hero from a fable can serve to facilitate their engagement with their problems and also serve as a means of linking their inner and outer world. Time is taken to describe alternative world-views to mainstream western culture including alternative concepts of sickness and mental health. It is argued that as it is these views that inform the clients way of relating to the world, they can also indicate various therapeutic paths of treatment.

A chapter is dedicated to the work of Tobie Nathan's ethnopsychiatry. Through seeking a more flexible approach than Nathan's to the needs and problems of migrants, Losi develops his own ethno-systemic-narrative model. The book closes with a case study.

This book will be of interest to ethnopsychotherapists, to those working with refugees or immigrants, or interested in the issues of migration. However there is much here that will interest anyone wishing to gain a greater understanding of our multi-cultural world.

Spis treści

Series Editor’s Foreword -- Preface -- Introduction -- Part I -- The structure of migration trauma in ethno-systemic-narrative practice:initiation rites and fables -- Ethnopsychiatry, visions of the world, and medical paradigms -- Western psychotherapies adapted for migrants and ethnopsychotherapy -- Part II -- Psychotherapeutic practice with migrant families: the case of a young child traumatized by war -- The Child Sorcerer: the transmission of misfortune in a Kongo context. Description of an ethnopsychiatric treatment -- Armand and the “hole”: therapy with a family from Zaire

O autorze

Natale Losi is a family psychotherapist, medical anthropologist and sociologist who has extensive professional experience working in various African countries, as well as various conflict and post-conflict societies such as Albania, Kosovo and Palestine. He is currently the Head of Psychosocial and Cultural Integration Unit at the Regional Mediterranean Mission of the International Organization for Migration, based in Rome. His numerous books include 'Psychosocial and Trauma Response in War-Torn Societies: The Case of Kosovo' (2000), 'Archives of Memory: Supporting Traumatized Communities through Narration and Remembrance' (2001) and 'Lives Elsewhere: Migration and Psychic Malaise' (2006).