Voltar

Admitting the need for help may also compound the survivor's sense of defeat. The therapists Inger Agger and Soren Jensen, who work with political refugees, describe the case of K, a torture survivor with severe post-traumatic symptoms who adamantly insisted that he had no psychological problems: "K...did not understand why he was to talk with a therapist. His problems were medical: the reason why he did not sleep at night was due to the pain in his legs and feet. He was asked by the therapist...about his political background, and K told him that he was a Marxist and that he had read about Freud and he did not believe in any of that stuff: how could his pain go away by talking to a therapist?

Judith Lewis Herman , em Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
pride healing psychology psychotherapy denial therapy mental-illness mental-health psychoanalysis freud abuse-survivors post-traumatic-stress-disorder ptsd posttraumatic-stress-disorder sigmund-freud powerlessness healing-from-abuse traumatic-experiences stigma mental-disorder tortured torture-survivors male-survivor political-refugees self-stigma

...some patients resist the diagnosis of a post-traumatic disorder. They may feel stigmatized by any psychiatric diagnosis or wish to deny their condition out of a sense of pride. Some people feel that acknowledging psychological harm grants a moral victory to the perpetrator, in a way that acknowledging physical harm does not.

Judith Lewis Herman , em Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
pride healing psychotherapy prejudice denial defeat recovery therapy mental-illness mental-health trauma defeated abuse-survivors post-traumatic-stress-disorder ptsd posttraumatic-stress-disorder mental-health-stigma powerlessness labeling labelling healing-from-abuse traumatic-experiences stigma mental-disorder tortured torture-survivors male-survivor political-refugees self-stigma