Bearing Witness: Psychoanalytic Work with People Traumatized by Torture and State Violence edited by Andres Gautier and Anna Sabatini Scalmati. Published by Karnac, London, 2010; 158 pp; pound20.99.

摘要

It is often refreshing for English-speaking readers, if intimidating, to read papers on a familiar subject seen from a European perspective: there is a poetic quality to some of the writing that can bring to life a concept that has become tired and over-familiar. Here is an example from the Introduction (p. xx): 'An inheritance of suffering, a sediment, a deposit of death that impairs their mental soundness, blurs their feelings and colonizes their internal world; a disturbing polysemy ...', even if this last word has us turning to the dictionary.