A Discussion of “Going to Where the World Ends: When the Bodies of Children Speak Who is Listening?”

Abstract

This commentary is a response to Dr. Rachael Peltz’s paper (this issue) concerning the experience of resignation syndrome among refugee children in Sweden, and more broadly extreme traumatic stress endured by refugees globally. Dr. Peltz’s paper raises important questions for psychoanalytic practitioners and scholars concerning our engagement with sociocultural and political trauma and violence directed against children and families. My commentary focuses on three major areas, including the ways in which the bodies of children contain collective traumatic stress and ambivalence toward living and dying, the social disorder of xenophobia and racism that marginalizes and traumatizes the most vulnerable, and psychoanalytic witnessing as a response to state sponsored abuse of children.

This article refers to:

Going to Where the World Ends: When the Bodies of Children Speak Who is Listening?

View responses to this article:

The Song of the Silent Children: Reply to Durban, Grand and Tummala-Nara

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pratyusha Tummala-Narra

Pratyusha Tummala-Narra, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology department at Boston College, and in independent practice in Cambridge, MA. She is the author of Psychoanalytic Theory and Cultural Competence in Psychotherapy, published by the American Psychological Association.