Editorial: Special Issue on Trauma, Flight and Migration

I ain’t looking for prayers or pity

I ain’t coming around searching for a crutch

I just want someone to talk to

And a little of that human touch

Just a little of that human touch ….

No one wanted to talk to us … they treated us like animals, put us behind fences, like in a prison … 18 months I lived there, in anxiety and despair, until finally I found a possibility to escape and to come to Germany … here at least someone is listening to me … (Mr B.)

It is the case the world-over, that many refugees need “someone to talk to” as we know from our everyday work in the first reception institution “Michaelisdorf” in Germany. And as is the case everywhere, it is difficult to find volunteers and even professionals who can bear to listen to what refugees like Mr B. had gone through, why he had left his home country, had become a refugee. Mr B. was sent to my (LB) weekly consultation by the medical team because he was in a dreadful physical and psychological condition. The medical doctor had discovered scars all over his body. Mr B. had been tortured by the secret service in his country and had to witness how his father and two brothers were killed in a brutal way. “It is a miracle that I survived—the only one of my family ….” he finally said. In this volume some groups of psychoanalytical researchers and clinicians discuss their experiences working with traumatized refugees and migrants.

Trauma, flight and migration have become signatures of our time. Possibly never before in history, have this many people been afflicted by persecution, war and poverty in their native countries and as a result have had to migrate as is the case today: According to the United Nations (UN) annual report on refugees from 2016, more than 65 million people were affected by the ongoing crisis. In 2015, 890,000 refugees came to Germany (see BBC World News, 4 March 20161 for the large numbers of refugees that have come into European Union [EU] countries). The individual and collecti