Measuring Suffering
Conflicts And Solutions In Refugee Studies

Raija-Leena Punamäki

This chapter introduces my research experiences among Palestinian women, children, and political ex-prisoners and discusses some conflicting issues. First, I will present our research settings and questions and explore the theoretical models that depict the links between the sociopolitical reality and psychological experience. Then, I will respond to the critics of psychological research on traumatized refugees who object to it on political, ethical, and scientific grounds. They argue that the applied models ignore human resourcefulness, cultural diversity, and political context. My response is that psychosocial well-being is also a victim's human right. Research can expand our knowledge about the processes that facilitate recovery from trauma, and this knowledge, if properly translated into intervention, helps people to recover. Finally, I will present two significant findings from this research: first, the role of ideological commitment in promoting well-being in violent conditions; and second, the function of dreaming in processing and recovering from painful experiences.