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Psycho-social Explorations of Trauma, Exclusion and Violence: Un-housed Minds and Inhospitable Environments

Author(s) : Christopher Scanlon, Author(s) : John Adlam

Reviews and Endorsements

"Psychoanalysis inaugurated the study of the unknown in human experience. Group analysis added the previously unexplored impact of the social and political context on personal life and relations. Now Scanlon and Adlam incorporate the ecological and architectural aspects of our lives, derived from power relations and inequalities in the distribution of wealth, which lead the casualties of the system to an un-housed, dis-membered, and dis-eased existence. This exceptional book is far from neutrality and a revolutionary contribution. Its reading is a must." - Juan Tubert-Oklander, psychoanalyst and group analyst, Marista University of Merida.

"This is a profoundly disturbing book in the best sense. Chris Scanlon and John Adlam are known for their highly regarded psychosocial studies into the concept of the mind that is unhoused by trauma i.e those experiences that dismember and dissociate people from communities, creating communities of the excluded. In this rich work, they revisit and reconsider their work, with a lens informed by a deepening awareness of the costs of cruelty; whether by white people to people of colour, men to women and all of us to the very earth we stand on. Scanlon and Adlam stand up for the value of disturbance and dissidence, in a world where what can be said aloud seems to be constrained and people who say the ‘wrong’ thing can be excluded or cancelled as if they should not exist. We can learn from getting closer to the unloved and unloveable and we must do so, if we are not to fragment our minds, our communities and the earth itself. All those who work with excluded should read this book, if only to remind themselves that they are part of the group that excluded the people they claim to want to help. It is not always comfortable to look in a mirror but I think we can all be grateful to Scanlon and Adlam for holding up this particular glass." - Dr Gwen Adshead, consultant forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Broadmoor Hospital, UK.

"This book inspires a feeling of relief. It brings together the most pressing issues of our time—climate change, genocide, exclusionary nationalism and deep-rooted dehumanising racisms—in profoundly original ways that address power relations, exclusions, ‘unhousedness’ and (re)traumatisation. It faces the pain they engender while refusing familiar, patronising tropes of otherness. Its perceptive, and sometimes poetic, scholarship brings deep hope that other, genuinely psychosocial ways of living and relating are possible, despite disagreements and disappointments along the way." - Ann Phoenix, Professor of Psychosocial Studies, UCL, UK.

"Here we are given a mirror. In it we see something disturbing and yet hopeful about ourselves. We are confronted with the realization that healing occurs when we see that pain belongs to the collective rather than to the individuals who carry it on our behalf - a deeply knowledgeable, intensely wise, and fiercely ethical exploration of today’s predicament. Also one that points toward hope amidst the wreckage by suggesting how we might re-animate public spaces for reflection, empathy, and understanding." - James Krantz, PhD, Past President, International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations.