Propositions pour une approche thérapeutique du trauma chez les migrants

Abstract

Working with people living in precarious conditions with the help of a mobile staff of psychiatry and precariousness in the great Bordeaux, the author and his staff have met many migrants who experienced traumas either in their native countries and/or during their journey to Europe, and/or during their stay in France. First, the author recalls how the trauma attacks the person, as much in their corporal image as in their temporality, which can lead to a loss of identity and a loss of relationship with their community. Then, he describes the kind of care he gives to traumatized migrants, the targets, the meanings and progress that can be achieved. This implies first helping people to recover some self-consistency and a feeling of security to face spatial and temporal dislocation. Secondly, it means trying to approach the trauma itself and the terror that reminiscence reactivates continuously. This approach is confronted to the limits of using speech to come closer to that terror that exists beyond words. Such limitations encourage the use of mediations through art or the body.