THE BOSTON PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETY AND INSTITUTE
Cordially invites you to a program on
WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012, 8:00 pm at 15 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
EXTREME TRAUMA AND ITS TREATMENT: Mental, Social and Cultural Contexts
Presenter: SVERRE VARVIN, MD, PhD
Training and Supervising Analyst, Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society;
Senior Researcher, Norwegian Centre for Studies on Violence and Traumatic Stress,
University of Oslo; Chair, Program Committee for the next IPAC in Prague
And member of the China Committee.
Comments
Michael Grodin, MD
Director, Project on Medicine and the Holocaust,
Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University;
Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine;
Member, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute
In this presentation Dr. Varvin will discuss how extreme traumatisation in the context of human rights violations may be understood psychoanalytically, and how these patients may be helped in psychoanalytic therapy.
The background for this presentation is Dr. Varvin’s work for more than twenty years with people who have been exposed to serious and traumatising attacks on their person and their social relations. Though he has worked mostly in Norway with refugees, Dr. Varvin also has experience in other countries, including Turkey, the Balkans, Palestine and China.
The questions he will consider include: Is psychoanalytic therapy helpful for severely traumatised patients who are from cultures other than the therapist? How can psychoanalytic understanding be useful in understanding social trauma and in the implementation of adequate preventive measures and policies in relation to traumatised populations?