ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy with psychosocially disadvantaged children and adolescents demands special awareness of the familial, institutional, and societal contexts of treatment. This is especially the case when the child comes from an exiled, torture-surviving family. Governmental persecution and torture violently transgress personal, familial, and societal boundaries and affect the tortured member of a family and his or her spouse and children. The psychological effects of torture are often long-term and extensive and include severe posttraumatic symptoms such as chronic irritability, sensitivity to noise, increased suspicion, fits of rage with loss of control, sleep disturbances with nightmares, and loss of vitality and of hopes for the future. The Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims in Copenhagen is a humanitarian, non-political, and nongovernment institution founded in 1982 with the dual aims of rehabilitation of torture victims and contribution to the prevention of torture. The rehabilitation programme also includes medical assessment, physiotherapy, nursing, social counselling, and cognitively orientated supportive social group-work.
