Time, Trauma, and Ambiguous Loss: Working with Families with Missing Members in Postconflict Cyprus

Abstract

In this chapter, I engage a crucial dimension of trauma, which is the disruption of die unifying thread of temporality, and die unique challenges presented by traumatic ambiguous loss. Trauma discourses propose that 'symptoms' of traumatic stress, often refined to as dissociation and multiplicity, can be understood in terms of trauma's impact in dismpting the sense of being-in-time. Ambiguous loss, experienced by families with missing members in post-conflict zones, captures this freeze-frame, timeless quality of trauma, where traumatic experiences become an eternal present in which a family system and larger communities can feel trapped, and notions of a future lose meaning. The ways in which traumatic memory is both present and absent, elusively existing in the realms of the sensory and affective, and defying language and assimilation into a coherent sense of identity, are explored. Adapting family therapy practices to work with families with missing members in post-conflict Cyprus, and the complex ways that different members adjust and adapt following DNA identification of remains, are discussed through a clinical vignette. I conclude with a brief discussion of the discourse of refugee trauma and the positionality of systemic practitioners who seek to be helpful tbe refugee families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)