Remaking Connections: Refugees and the Development of ‘Emotional Capital’ in Therapy Groups1

Many asylum-seekers arrive in this country in a traumatized state. Much psychic work, including mourning for the old lost life, has to take place before the individual can make use of the social and economic opportunities, such as they are, eventually afforded by the host culture. We describe a form of ongoing specialized psychoanalytic group therapy that addresses the psychological issues that can impede the individual's integration into a new country. The concept of ‘emotional capital’ is introduced as a way of summarizing those internal capacities we see as fundamental to the individual's capacity to make use of what Putnam (2000) has termed ‘social capital’. Asylum-seekers from several countries with only extremely limited English in common are seen together in an ongoing therapy group, where they may remain for over a year, before they are ready (emotionally and linguistically) to join a heterogeneous psychoanalytic psychotherapy group within the same Department. Clinical material is presented from the two settings: the Refugees’ Group, to illustrate the first steps in the rebuilding of a capacity to make emotional connections and the later Analytic Therapy Group where refugees’ earlier developmental difficulties can be addressed within the new social context.