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The Trauma Story: The Psychiatric Care of Refugee Survivors of Violence and Torture
DOI link for The Trauma Story: The Psychiatric Care of Refugee Survivors of Violence and Torture
The Trauma Story: The Psychiatric Care of Refugee Survivors of Violence and Torture book
The Trauma Story: The Psychiatric Care of Refugee Survivors of Violence and Torture
DOI link for The Trauma Story: The Psychiatric Care of Refugee Survivors of Violence and Torture
The Trauma Story: The Psychiatric Care of Refugee Survivors of Violence and Torture book
ABSTRACT
This plea for help was given to the author by an elderly Cambodian widow who had lost her husband and most of her extended family during the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979). It took many years before we could hear the requests and the stories of our Indochinese patients. Primo Levi, in his book Se questa e un uomo (Suroival in Auschwitz) (Levi, 1986), describes the two most recurrent dreams experienced by himself and his fellow concentration camp survivors in Nazi Germany. One dream was about eating. The prisoners would dream about eating in their sleep-moving their empty mouths and grinding their teeth as imaginary food briefly healed their aching and hungry bellies. In the second dream, the prisoners had returned home and were sharing with their families their concentration camp experiences. But, no one would listen.