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

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War rips the social fabric of refugees’ lives, disrupting physical, psychological, and emotional structures that may have been in place for generations and leaving persons without a home and without a sense of belonging. This chapter engages a crucial dimension of trauma—the disruption of the unifying thread of temporality—and the unique challenges presented by ambiguous loss in internally displaced Greek Cypriot refugee families with a missing member. A clinical vignette highlights the different ways family members respond or recalibrate to identification of remains of a loved one. Therapeutic work with refugee families erodes the Western dichotomy between public and private, and involves modalities that move beyond the “talking cure” of traditional psychotherapy. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the discourse of refugee trauma and the positionality of systemic practitioners who seek to be helpful with refugee families.