Editorial by Paul Tibbles in dialogue with Ncazelo Ncube
This edition of Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry (CCPP) has developed in the context of ongoing and increasing international alarm at the levels of displaced children, young people and families seeking refuge from persecution, war and economic privations. Initially as special editor, my focus was on how to promote articles which addressed the immediate and long-term needs of these people and the therapeutic care that should be made available to them. However, I was aware of divergent views that existed between some practitioners who focussed on addressing trauma, while others were attentive to promoting resilience. Among the many other issues which I considered important were the long-term effects on parents of losing a child during conflict, cultural sensitivity of services, the wider political context, and the impact of vicarious trauma and vicarious resilience on health and social care staff. I think that the articles in this edition cover many of these issues which are highly relevant when addressing the psychological well-being of displaced and persecuted children and families. Although these articles are derived from different parts of the globe, they inevitably reflect a bias towards researchers and clinicians originating from more affluent recipient countries rather than the perspective of those working in emerging economies. It was with this in mind that I approached Ncazelo Ncube to ask her to engage with me in an email dialogue about our different perspectives on how best to promote the psychological development and well-being of children, young people and families seeking asylum and refuge. Ncazelo is well known for her work in South Africa using narrative approaches with displaced children (Ncube, 2006). Our email dialogue is located below and, as can be gathered, there was considerable reflection about our own history and cultural context and how that impacted on the way we made sense of what we experienced and the ramifications of this on our work. Paul: Life contains periodic poignant coincidences and such an incident happened to me while preparing to write this editorial. A number of unexpected conjunctions in my own life had ramifications and connections with my thinking about the victims of war, refugee families and unaccompanied children seeking sanctuary. Prior to starting to write the editorial, I was called to jury service for a trial in a part of London where I had moved to from Devon almost 40 years earlier. At that time, it was a desolate and empty area of derelict warehouses surrounded by the last remaining bombsites in the city. I revelled in being able to walk through this during the working week without seeing another person. It was truly Dickensian. Now, it has some of the most expensive real estate in the country, there are vast crowds of people walking along its footpaths and the last remaining physical memories of World War II have been erased. The 755775 CCP0010.1177/1359104518755775Clinical Child Psychology and PsychiatryEditorial editorial2018
Hope and despair in narrative and family therapy : adversity, forgiveness, and reconciliation
Hoffman, Foreword. Flaskas, McCarthy, Sheehan, Introduction: The Territory of Hope and Despair. Part I: Reflections on Hope and Despair. Weingarten, Hope in a Time of Global Despair. Flaskas, The Balance of Hope and Hopelessness. Byrne, McCarthy, The Dialectical Structure of Hope and Despair: A Fifth Province Approach. Part II: Facing Adversity: Practices of Hope. McGoldrick, Moore Hines, Hope: The Far Side of Despair. Wade, Despair, Resistance, Hope: Response-based Therapy with Victims of Violence. Ingram, Perlesz, The Getting and Giving of Wisdoms: Generating Hope. Shuda, Finding a Way Towards Being. Madigan, Anticipating Hope within Written and Naming Domains of Despair. Coulter, Healy, Reilly, Hope in the Process: Conducting Systemically-oriented Trauma Work Within the Context of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland. Part III: Reflections on Reconciliation and Forgiveness. James, The Interactional Process of Forgiveness and Responsibility: A Critical Assessment of the Family Therapy Literature. Tomm, Govier, Acknowledgement: Its Significance for Reconciliation and Wellbeing. Jones, Moving On: Forgiveness, Vengeance and Reconciliation. Sheehan, Forgiveness and the Unforgivable: The Resurrection of Hope in Family Therapy.
Poststructuralist historicism and the psychological construction of anxiety disorders.
When applied to the construction of anxiety disorders, theories of poststructuralist historicism emphasize acts of interpretation that constitute and construct the disorders and problematize the processes by which meaning is constructed. An examination of the historical formulations of anxiety disorders, and in particular, agoraphobia, provides the opportunity for reanalyzing traditional approaches to the classifications of disorders. Psychological issues of paradox, attachment, and personal identity, which are crucial to current conceptualizations of agoraphobia, are acutely problematized within a poststructuralist historicist hermeneutic. A rethinking of disorder construction from within this hermeneutic suggests replacing individualistic conceptualizations of personal identity with a broader view that recognizes and celebrates multiplicity and that displays formulations of the self in a contextualized and historicized status, thus enabling a fuller engagement with the social world.