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To be a refugee is an ambiguous situation. On the one hand, it's a longed-for status for those who have felt oppression, persecution or abuses in their home country. On the other hand, it's a disagreeable reality in a country where you are viewed as strange, different…
With these words Sverre Varvin, a prominent Norwegian psychoanalyst introduces his book on the refugee patient. Is the refugee a migrant or should his or her fate be considered as living in permanent exile or a diaspora? Whichever of these views one applies, the feeling of homelessness will be stronger if the refugee has experienced torture or persecution: the body isn't a place for rest any more; the soul is torn by violent memories, painful sensations or nightmares of fear.
Varvin has written what he calls a “treatment book” for everyone who is engaged in working with refugees. The treatment he expounds is a psychoanalytically informed, psychotherapeutic approach, which — he argues — should be integrated with different other interventions that may be necessary. In Varvin's model, the general practitioner has the main responsibility for these patients and the book is hence written for a wide range of health-care professionals, though psychoanalysts will certainly also benefit from reading it. Among others, the interpreter, too, needs the knowledge and skills presented in this book; and all professional helpers need to learn about aspects such as cultural and gender-specific conflicts and challenges with regard to experiencing and working through sexual abuse and torture. Varvin strongly emphasizes the importance of seeing the whole person socially and culturally.
Varvin has extensive experience of this kind of work. His compassionate way of writing about it shows genuine empathy and a profound wish to know what the subjective experience of being a refugee is like. He starts by writing about traumatization and its possible sequelae characterized either by resilience or devitalization. He quotes Hauser (1