“Arrivals”: Narrating Migration through Images. The Use of Images in Post-Traumatic Therapy

Abstract

This essay wants to underline the importance of images as a tool to access traumatic memories of refugees. The authors propose a narrative technique (post-traumatic intervention model) using the power of images and their potentialities. Arrivals’ images facilitate the chance to recall, narrate, accept, understand and hold complex and painful stories: they have the extraordinary ability to organize difficult events by placing them in space and time, giving the opportunity to “speak the unspeakable”.

Keywords

• trauma
• psychology
• refugees
• complex PTSD
• images
• psychotherapy
• migration