ABSTRACT

Using themes from Milan Kundera and Aeschylus, two different languages of involuntary dislocation are identified: that of ‘damage and repair’, which is logical and reasonably clear, and that of nostalgic disorientation, which is unclear, poetic, and desires something that is still unknown. Struck by adversity, people become ‘philosophers’, asking questions that are unanswerable about the meaning of their plight and about life, in general. This duality of languages inherent in involuntary dislocation is riddled with riddles, not because it is meaningless but because it contains too many meanings and at different levels. How to address both, although they refer to two different universes? The Adversity Grid enables the acknowledgement of pain and suffering as well as appreciating the retained strengths (resilience) and new strengths (Adversity-Activated Development), even in therapeutic contexts outside formal psychotherapy. Hence, another important distinction: between ‘doing psychotherapy’ and ‘being therapeutic’. This book articulates an approach of ‘Synergic Therapeutic Complexity’, enabling one to collaborate synergically with the strengths of the affected person/s while not ignoring their damagedness. Characteristics of a ‘mechanistic’ approach (i.e. based exclusively on the language of ‘damage and repair’) are contrasted, in a table, to those of a ‘synergic’ one. The heuristic value of this approach for theory and practice is emphasised.