Psychoanalysis and the situation of refugees: A human rights perspective
Chapter, Peer reviewed
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URI
https://www.crcpress.com/Psychoanalysis-Law-and-Society/Montagna-Harris/p/book/9780367194505https://hdl.handle.net/10642/8203
Date
2019Metadata
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Original version
Varvin, S. (2019). Psychoanalysis and the situation of refugees: A human rights perspective. In: P. Montagna & A. Harris. Psychoanalysis, law and society, New York: Routledge, 9-26Abstract
We have today the highest number of persons who have been displaced due to war,
persecution and terror since the Second World War. More than 65 million people are
currently displaced, either internally or as refugees. Most are in developing countries with a
small portion having reached western, high-income countries. Borders to western countries
have however been increasingly difficult to pass and there is disproportionate anxiety about
and resistance to receiving refugees.
Refugees as a group experience abundant human rights abuses and perhaps as a group,
experience the most severe, prolonged, and extreme traumatisation and complicated losses
today.
Flight has become increasingly dangerous. Large numbers of people are exposed to sickness
producing circumstances, inhumane conditions, and danger of death.
Basic human rights are violated before, during and after flight.
This chapter will focus on how human rights violations can damage psychic and somatic
health and produce illness for both the individual and the group. International human rights
declarations and laws aim at protecting health and quality of life. It is necessary that
psychoanalysts understand the direct influence on the psyche of violations of these rights
and how they affect psychic economy, affect regulation, relational capacities, and family and
caretaking functions. It will be argued that psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts can play a
crucial role in both prevention and treatment, in line with earlier psychoanalytic pioneers as
John Bowlby and René Spitz.
The situation now is serious with large groups of refugees living under appalling conditions
at Europe’s border and in low-income countries around the world. There are great risks for
younger generations through transgenerational processes of transmission of suffering.