Issue 11, November 2017

One of the greatest achievements in science was the discovery and decoding of the DNA molecule. Through this, an autonomous scientific domain was created and scientific efforts focusing on DNA research and therapeutic applications are still awarded Nobel prizes. It is a common belief that molecular biology and genetics will be the scientific center around which Human sciences will spin. So, how can you reply when a patient asks: "Isn't it a matter of DNA, doctor?"

The paper’s issues are trauma and resilience which are “transmitted” by refugees to helpers. The aim of this paper is to inform experts and volunteers about the challenges and the results of working with refugees. The issue is considered as topical and important not only because large numbers of people are involved in the support system for refugees but also because it is connected with economic, social and political processes.

The transmission of psychic life from parents to children and from generation to generation has been a subject of research over the past decades. In addition to heredity, important scholars, psychoanalysts (KAES R. & FAIMBERG H.) and family therapists (BOSZORMENYI-NAGY I. & SPARK GM, BOWEN M.) seek out transmission mechanisms and identify important vulnerable areas of psychic life such as values and loyalties, names, hidden family secrets, mental traumas, etc.

I am well pleased that Katia's book, a demanding work of many levels and great quality, also makes the reader work hard. Clearly, I am not qualified to hold forth to an audience of psychiatrists and psychologists on “schizogenesis”, “triangulation” and the “undifferentiated mass of the familial ego”.

Reading the book "Families in LeapYears - Notes of a Psychiatrist", a question recurred that has often been of great concern to me: "Is politics related to psychotherapy?" Psychotherapy very often has tangible, positive or even impressive results, as opposed to the politics, which for the past decade in Greece, but also in Europe, has been producing poisonous results.