ABSTRACT
Part I of this book contains five chapters; the first is an introduction by Vamık Volkan. These chapters present theoretical, conceptual, and sociocultural considerations for working with asylum seekers, refugees, and war and torture victims. As such, they establish a foundational framework by which to understand the complex and difficult work with people who have been uprooted from their homelands and thrust into the very uncertain world of seeking shelter, political status, and a niche in another country and culture. Asylum seekers, refugees, and war and torture victims have been cast adrift on the seas of fate and the mercy of God. As victims of war, political upheaval, or catastrophe, they journey from a home base of known certainties to unknown places in an unfamiliar culture. It is a process of uprooting, being dislodged from established patterns of daily living, and having a meaningful role in a community. The process of becoming, and later being, an asylum seeker and refugee is difficult at best and often traumatizing. However, the traumatizing effects of asylum seeking or being a refugee in a homeland or “strangeland” are overlayed by personal experiences of trauma. Many asylum seekers and refugees have layers of trauma — personal, familial, social, cultural, national, and spiritual. They bring the legacy of their own trauma experiences and personal losses (e.g., loved ones, home, family, country, job) with them to the country in which they seek
acceptance and opportunities to build new lives with a tangible hope for a better future. For many, the journey from leaving homeland to becoming an asylum seeker is a journey of travel into psychological uncertainty and the darkness of the unknown that is experienced as living “in between” different worlds of reality; that which “was” and that which “exists” without a foreseeable future. Psychologically, it is the peril of the abyss (see Wilson, Chapter 6).
