TERRORIST MINDSETS: destructive effects of victimisation and humiliation

Terrorist mindset is defined as a preparedness to hurt or kill innocent people for a »higher cause« (ideological, political or religious). It involves degrees of dehumanisation of other human beings and uses destructive and indiscriminate violence. Terrorist mindset may develop in individuals and groups in different contexts; in various terrorist groups (fundamentalist, political, vigilant etc), as state organised violence or in the context of organised military or paramilitary activity. Humiliation and traumatisation of groups or nations are seen as producing preconditions for the development of terrorist mindsets

“Imagine, 7 Years Without a Future”: A Qualitative Study of Rejected Asylum Seekers' Life Conditions in Norway

Asylum seekers are in an extraordinary situation as their future life depend on decisions made by authorities in a bewildering, bureaucratic system, with excessive waiting and unpredictable timeframes. Those that are not granted asylum, and not able to return to their country of origin, can neither spatially nor temporally visualize if, when or how a potential change is going to occur. This paper is part of a larger study based on narrative interviews with asylum seekers and refugees in asylum centers in Norway, exploring their experiences before, during, and after flight. As we found that the life circumstances for those being refused asylum, were highly different from other participants in the project, we chose to address this particular group in a separate paper. The participants in this part of the study consisted of 21 individuals (of a total of 78 participants) in the age range 18–44, of whom eight were female and 13 males. Trough qualitative interviews and participant observation the aim of this study was to explore and describe the life condition and mental health situation of rejected asylum seekers in Norway. We found that the gradual loss of rights, opportunities and finances are experienced as a form of violence that leads to extreme mental and social suffering. This policy clearly conflicts with Human Rights incorporated in the Norwegian constitution, and we argue that it legitimizes treating asylum seekers as a group of undesirable and underserving political bodies, with serious consequences for their mental health and wellbeing

Extreme Traumatization: Conceptualization and Treatment from the Perspective of Object-Relations and Modern Research

In the last century civilians increasingly became targets in wars, totalitarian regimes and internal wars. This trend continues into this century. The basic unity in all societies, the family in its different forms, is thus increasingly under attack in these war zones, with serious consequences for the mental health and the development of its members. Responses to Traumatization The accepted use of trauma concepts is highly problematic. The word “trauma” implies something static and reified, like a “thing” in the mind, and this usage tends to divert attention towards the dynamic and reorganizing processes in the traumatized person’s mind, body and relations to others that happens after being exposed to atrocities. These are processes that depend on the level of personality organization, on past traumatizing experiences, on the circumstances during atrocities and, most importantly, on the context that meets the survivor afterwards. It is the person’s responses to atrocity as well as the responses of others and of societies as a whole that to a large degree determine the fate of the traumatized person and her group. Research has convincingly confirmed the importance of the response to the traumatized afterwards, beginning with Hans Keilson’s seminal work on Jewish children survivors after the second world war and also later researches (Gagnon and Stewart 2013; Keilson and Sarpathie 1979; Simich and Andermann 2014; Ungar 2012). Psychoanalysis is one such societal response, both in its practical therapeutic form and as a comprehensive theory for understanding the mind’s relation to the body and the general context of the trauma

Psychoanalysis with the traumatized patient: Helping to survive extreme experiences and complicated loss

Extreme and complex traumatization represents a severe problem in today's world. Many traumatized individuals and their families live in difficult conditions in refugee camps, in shelters, and in exile. Treatment and rehabilitation approaches thus need to take social and cultural conditions into consideration. This paper will discuss how psychoanalytic therapy may be helpful for severely traumatized patients, as well as the mechanisms of change in the therapeutic process. It focuses on how traumatic experiences are actualized in the transference and bring the analyst into a situation where enactments inevitably occur. It will be shown how these processes may lead to a symbolization of nonsymbolized reminiscences of traumatic experiences. Psychoanalytic therapy with patient with complicated loss experiences will be analyzed, and some conclusions based on this and others researched therapies will be discussed. The advantages of working with trauma-related material in the transference will be considered

The essay method: A qualitative method for studying therapeutic dialogues

This paper presents a qualitative research method for analysing therapeutic dialogues called ‘the essay method’. A central part of the method uses the format of the literary essay as a model. The method consists of a close monitoring of clinical material guided by an overall psychoanalytic/psychodynamic theoretical frame. It combines both clinical details and global patterns of clinical material and is especially fitted for studying relational qualities of psychotherapeutic dialogues. In this paper, the background for qualitative analysis in studying psychoanalytic material is discussed, and the procedures for using the method are demonstrated. A study of therapeutic competence in a group of student therapists is used as an example of the method in practice, demonstrating that the essay method may have potential for revising theory and establishing new concepts based on empirical findings. The essay method is compared with other qualitative methods, and it is argued that it is suitable for psychoanalytic research

Psykoanalysen og kvalitativ forskning. Forskning på narrativer, dialoger og prosess

Psychoanalytic epistemology implies interpretation of meaningful relations in a historical, developmental perspective. Interpersonal and intrapsychic phenomena are interpreted in their context. This article focuses on research strategies based on this epistemology. Qualitative research methods are seen as suitable for studies of narratives and dialogues where phenomena are understood in their context and interpreted from different perspectives. The aim is to identify the new and specific (not only to replicate) and revise, expand or change theory. This research strategy will be exemplified using Assimilation Analysis and Dialogic Sequence analysis on a psychotherapy process with a patient who has been severely traumatized

Fundamentalist mindset

Fundamentalism has increasingly become a part of the political discourse in western countries and is to a large degree associated Islamic Jihadism. Fundamentalism has, however, been a concern in all religions, especially in Christianity where the term has its origin more than 100 years ago. Fundamentalism is also a concern in professional organisations and this paper starts with a discussion of the relation between fundaments and fundamentalist tendencies in psychoanalysis. This is then related to fundamentalism on a larger scale in religious and political contexts. A central question is how adherence to fundamentals, understood as basic principles for a profession or a religious-political movement, may develop into fundamentalism and how this again may develop into more violent forms. It is argued that fundamentalism develops in historical and societal contexts that involve oppression, atrocities and suffering that can set in motion unconscious processes and that these can attain expression and form in religious–political ideologies. These ideologies can give solutions by among others strengthening societal division and splitting and by identifying scapegoats. Psychoanalytic understanding of mass psychology and unconscious processes at group levels are developed to understand present Islamic and other forms of fundamentalist movements in the European context

Psychoanalysis and the situation of refugees: A human rights perspective

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

Our Relations to Refugees: Between Compassion and Dehumanization

After the so-called refugee crisis of 2015–2016 European reactions to foreigners had come to the fore and we are seeing xenophobic political and populist movements become increasingly mainstream. The massive rejection of refugees/asylum seekers taking place has made their conditions before, during and after flight, increasingly difficult and dangerous. This paper relates current xenophobia to historical attitudinal trends in Europe regarding Islam, and claims that a much more basic conflict is at work: the one between anti-modernism/traditionalism and modernism/globalization. Narratives on refugees often relate them to both the foreign (Islam) and to “trauma”. In an environment of insecurity and collective anxiety, refugees may represent something alien and frightening but also fascinating. I will argue that current concepts and theories about “trauma” or “the person with trauma” are insufficient to understand the complexity of the refugee predicament. Due to individual and collective countertransference reactions, the word “trauma” tends to lose its theoretical anchoring and becomes an object of projection for un-nameable anxieties. This disturbs relations to refugees at both societal and clinical levels and lays the groundwork for the poor conditions that they are currently experiencing. Historically, attitudes towards refugees fall somewhere along a continuum between compassion and rejection/dehumanization. At the moment, they seem much closer to the latter. I would argue that today’s xenophobia and/or xeno-racism reflect the fact that, both for individuals and for society, refugees have come to represent the Freudian Uncanny/das Unheimliche

Psychoanalysis with the traumatized patient: Helping to survive extreme experiences and complicated loss

Extreme and complex traumatization represents a severe problem in today's world. Many traumatized individuals and their families live in difficult conditions in refugee camps, in shelters, and in exile. Treatment and rehabilitation approaches thus need to take social and cultural conditions into consideration. This paper will discuss how psychoanalytic therapy may be helpful for severely traumatized patients, as well as the mechanisms of change in the therapeutic process. It focuses on how traumatic experiences are actualized in the transference and bring the analyst into a situation where enactments inevitably occur. It will be shown how these processes may lead to a symbolization of nonsymbolized reminiscences of traumatic experiences. Psychoanalytic therapy with patient with complicated loss experiences will be analyzed, and some conclusions based on this and others researched therapies will be discussed. The advantages of working with trauma-related material in the transference will be considered