Martha Bragin

Making Meaning Together: Helping Survivors of Violence to Learn at School

The deleterious effects on cognitive capacity in children and adolescents who have been exposed to violence at home and in the community have been meticulously documented. What is less well known is how very much these youngsters want to learn at school. Children and adolescents from violent backgrounds, like others, equate education with a hopeful future and are eager to attend. However, when they do go to school, the violence that they experience leaves them terrified to think. Instead they resort to concrete enactments that make completing school work nearly impossible. Attachment based research suggests that thinking about thinking is a neuropsychological capacity that is co-created with caregivers, parents and teachers. People with “reflective function” “mentalize,” that is, they think about what they are thinking and what others might be thinking. This capacity is part of what is lost when caregivers and the surrounding community are replete with random violence. The fact that we know how mentalization is created implies that it may be possible to restore, by creating conditions in the classroom that can foster it. Following an extensive review of psychoanalytic literature and theory, this paper offers a case example of a mentalization based approach to helping children affected by violence to tolerate their affects, survive putting words to experience, begin to mentalize, and through that process, succeed at school.

Pedrito The Blood of the Ancestors

Clinicians around the world struggle to treat the effects of war and violence on children and young people. The task of returning former child soldiers to society has been particularly challenging. In sub Saharan Africa, local clinicians noted that short-term Western therapies were not adequate to the task, and began to supplement a combination of community based interventions with treatment by traditional healers. This article explicates the ways in which the work of these healers owes its effectiveness to sound psychodynamic principles. Among the important characteristics of such treatment techniques is the availability of a constant object in the person of the healer, the recognition of the importance of symbolic processes and latent meaning, and the means to address and manage the aggression that has been evoked by participation in war and violence. The article chronicles the case history of one former child soldier from Angola. It describes how he was recruited, what he experienced, and the complicated treatment that lead to his recovery. Psychoanalytic literature is utilized, along with the theoretical work of Angolan psychologists, to explicate the psychodynamic underpinnings of the healer work.

Building culturally relevant social work for children in the midst of armed conflict: Applying the DACUM method in Afghanistan

The 21st century has created renewed interest in developing culturally relevant social work where it does not exist, especially for children affected by armed conflict and disaster, in order to ensure that local professional standards guide responses to these types of distress. In this context Afghanistan’s National Strategy for Children at Risk required the development of professional guidelines for social work practice with children in crisis. This article illustrates the collaboration of the Afghan government with two international schools of social work to initiate national social work standards and curricula by engaging local practitioners in defining their work and core competencies through the DACUM (Develop-A-Curriculum) method. Strengths and limitations of the method are explored, as are implications for social work development in Afghanistan and other conflict and disaster affected countries.

Style and substance: Examining the space between patient and therapist in the cross-cultural clinical encounter

(1999). Style and substance: Examining the space between patient and therapist in the cross-cultural clinical encounter. Journal of Social Work Practice: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 39-47.

Complex Attachments Exploring the Relation Between Mother and Child When Economic Necessity Requires Migration to the North

The changing global economy has brought changes in immigration patterns. Today female workers are sought in Western countries to serve as caregivers. These women leave behind their own children to provide a better future for them by caring for other peoples family members in wealthier countries far from home. Immigration policy in the host countries often makes it impossible for these women to gain the documentation necessary to bring their own children to live with them for many years. This economic phenomenon has created a clinical one: the stress on the relationship between these mothers and the children with whom they are reunited. This article focuses on three distinct categories of separation and reunion experience among families who have migrated from the Caribbean to the United States. It suggests issues to be addressed in each category of relationship to promote successful treatment.