Abstract
A counsellor working in a clinic for torture victims in Sri Lanka speaks of cultural collapse, confusion, and trauma. This interpretation is one among the many ways in which people speak about trauma, the many ways in which the word trauma has taken up a meaning in diverse cultural contexts. What is mentioned first is the experience of cultural collapse, of cultural destabilization. This is a common experience for the large number of people living in war-torn societies, refugee camps, or as political refugees in host countries.
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Argenti-Pillen, A. (2000). The Discourse on Trauma in Non-Western Cultural Contexts. In: Shalev, A.Y., Yehuda, R., McFarlane, A.C. (eds) International Handbook of Human Response to Trauma. Springer Series on Stress and Coping. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4177-6_6
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