John begged his therapist to tell him how he could tear off his arm. The memory of the tortures he suffered in Libya, including that of being hung by the arms, was in fact so persistent and pervasive as to generate in him a continuous feeling of tearing, which was both physical pain and memory of the terrible trauma: to get rid of that limb seemed to him the only possible way to leave that experience behind.
I have Freud in an App
by Valeria Pini
The psychologist Lilian pizzi, psychotherapist of Doctors without borders For years engaged in the care of survivors of torture, she is moved by talking about the sufferings that her patients tell her: but warns not to dwell on the macabre and gruesome details, because those “reduce people to a body, which is precisely what she experienced the victim. The purpose of torture is to eliminate thought, and the goal of therapy is to reactivate it ”.
Ache. A book teaches how to fight it
by Irma D’Aria
According to the psychologist in the sessions with the victims of torture the executioner is always present as a ghost, who continues to transmit his message of terror to the patient, annihilating him as a human being and condemning him to silence. The mistake that psycho-therapists can make is to “pathologize” the patient’s state, interpreting as “symptoms” those that are simply the results deliberately sought by torturers, who apply techniques generally developed by doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists to cancel the identity, culture, personal history and desires of the subject.
Covid, exactly one year since the nightmare began: will we ever go back to what we were?
by Claudia Carucci
Per Lace the term “travel” applied to migration is hypocritical, and even the term “trauma” does not do justice to the experience suffered by migrants who are victims of torture, which are deliberately inflicted on them to annihilate them and whose only possible result is the complete loss of trust in humanity.
The new life of Samuel, the surviving child. Like Eitan
by Fiammetta Cupellaro
The migratory journey is rather a tremendous “rite of passage”, characterized by three phases: separation from one’s own context of origin, followed by a state of marginalization and suffering and, in the end, the achievement of a new integration. The violence suffered by migrants stops them in the second phase, preventing them from reaching equilibrium. Therapeutic strategies are completely different from the usual ones, which push patients to search within themselves the causes of their conflicts and sufferings: in this case it is instead necessary to take a clear position, explaining to the person that what he feels has been deliberately inflicted on him and that the executioner wanted to impress within her a message from which one must free oneself.
Bulimia and anorexia: history of Gaia and the ‘hostage’ lives of eating disorders
by Valeria Pini
Instead, the victim dreams of getting rid of the body, which is the tool used to make her suffer and to remind her forever that she could undergo those treatments again; the therapist must consider the areas still intact, perhaps trying to activate the responses that the person himself would use in his social context of origin, rather than imposing our psychotherapeutic vision, which is no less “ethnic” than all other widespread healing practices on earth.
Health, how important are our daily choices
The executioner’s strategy and his theory on the victim’s mind (considered docile, submissive and harmless) must be revealed to the patient, and he must be helped to deeply feel a sense of revolt towards the injustices suffered, so that he can expel the toxic mental contents that was forced to introject. According to the doctor Lace “In the person there is an internal struggle between a part of himself still under the influence of the executioner, which is a sort of psychic parasite, and a part that tries to free himself … the silence must be broken and the symptoms must also be used to unmask the language of torture, which uses pain and power to nullify all desire ”.
Does Lourdes water have healing powers? Like placebo
by Noemi Penna
Peoples chronically exposed to political violence have an unusually high rate of severe mental disorders that persist for years after the traumatic events. The psychiatrist Mohammad Marie and his colleagues from the An-Najah National University of Nablus (Palestine) reported abnormally high rates of post-traumatic depression and anxiety in the Palestinian population. Geopolitical psychology is not limited to clinical diagnosis, often used to mask the material, historical and political causes of so much suffering, but integrates the latter into a global vision of the problems that takes into account the broader social context within which they unfold individual events.
Gifted children: intelligent but too lonely
by Priscilla Di Thiene
* Psychiatrist, Department of Mental Health, Viterbo
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