ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to develop some ideas about how we could begin to conceptualise the refugee condition from a non-pathologising and systemic perspective. The refugee condition affects many facets of life from the most tangible external aspects such as shelter, food, health, education and often even physical survival itself, to a wide spectrum of psychological dimensions. There is an implicit tendency to construct theories of change in psychology on the basis of either individual psychological factors or, when we do include the wider social system, of predictable interactions within our social network. Stories about war appear to have a rather paradoxical position in the Western world, where they are portrayed either as if they are distant and irrelevant phenomena or noble and heroic events. The media and the 'specialist care industry' constantly produce new stories which inadvertently seem to maintain this paradox as well as the epistemological confusion and ultimately the inertia.
