Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Introduction • Natale Losi
bearer (usually unwittingly) of repetition and death. The models and
ghosts interacting in psychosocial humanitarian interventions therefore
might, for analysis, be coupled with those described by Enriquez
(Enriquez, 1980), when the humanitarian worker/trainer can be seen as a
figure who:
1. Offers a good model/form;
2. Heals and restores;
3. Gives light to, helps emerge;
4. Interprets, makes aware;
5. Helps act, change, move;
6. Is dedicated to something, takes on problems;
7. Is free of taboos, prohibitions;
8. Acts so as to render the other mad (desiring destruction).
I would like to briefly discuss these images, towards two ends. The first is
to show that if the humanitarian worker chooses to adhere completely to
one or a few of these models/ghosts, he or she (though in our case we
could call this person a psycho-sociologist) contributes to the creation of a
world of doubles, in which violence inevitably rages, through the repropositioning
of the constellation many times aforementioned. This will
occur, even if the person’s selfless intention was to contribute to the creation
of a better humanity. The second reason to discuss this list is to show
how, through the use or interaction with the Archives of Memory, it is possible
to offer humanitarian workers a series of possible settings that reduce
the risk of perpetrating the rigid role of rescuer, therefore exempting the
other implicated players (aggressors and victims) from the bond of their
reciprocal role as generators of violence. Let us look briefly at what could
be a series of variations in the role of rescuer in humanitarian situations:
The trainer
The trainer is interested in “forms” and intervenes to re-form, trans-form,
de-form, etc. If the humanitarian workers’ representations of themselves fit
within the common category according to which they view themselves as
“model figures”, they propose de facto to deprive their interlocutors of
their own experiences, their difficulties, their anguish and their trial-anderror
progress, to substitute these for a “good form” that is fixed, repetitive,
deadly. Enriquez notes that this temptation is alive and well, above
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