Reflections on healing and recovery from the legacies of trauma and violence.

Abstract

With the arrival in Denmark of torture sur-vivors from Latin America in the nineteen seventies and eighties, therapists faced the challenge of how best to accompany the sur-vivors in their healing processes. The New Left and Feminism were important political movements which influenced the therapeu-tic approaches discussed at that time. In the author's meeting with Latin American col-leagues a dialogue about therapeutic methods was further developed with emphasis on the connection between "Human Rights and Mental Health". The civil war in the Balkans in the nineties brought new challenges: the development of psychosocial community in-terventions as well as an intensification of the debate between the "medical" and psycho-social approaches to trauma healing. Coop-eration during the last decade with NGOs in e.g., India, Cambodia, and Honduras brought new and more holistic perspectives on therapy represented by a brief version of Testimonial Therapy that sought to integrate cultural and spiritual traditions as well as "third wave" cognitive methods.