Healing the wounds - personal reflections on the evolution of therapeutic methods for survivors of torture

Abstract

A personal reflection from the past to the present on Inger Agger's work with trauma as a researcher, clinician and international trainer over the last 30 years. 

With the arrival in Denmark of torture survivors from Latin America in the nineteen seventies and eighties, therapists faced the challenge of how best to accompany the survivors in their healing processes. The New Left and Feminism were important political movements which influenced the therapeutic approaches discussed at that time. In the author’s meeting with Latin American colleagues, a dialogue about therapeutic methods was further developed with an emphasis on the connection between “Human Rights and Mental Health”. The civil war in the Balkans in the nineties brought new challenges: the development of psychosocial community interventions as well as an intensification of the debate between the “medical” and psychosocial approaches to trauma healing. Cooperation during the last decade with NGOs in e.g., India, Cambodia, and Honduras brought new and more holistic perspectives on therapy represented by a brief version of Testimonial Therapy that sought to integrate cultural and spiritual traditions as well as “third wave” cognitive methods.