NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF HISTORICAL REALITIES IN TESTIMONY WITH BOSNIAN SURVIVORS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING

MENTAL health care for traumatized refugees includes practices common to mainstream mental health care but also modifications and innovation s in technique and approach. One such innovation, the testimony method , was first described by a group of Chilean psychiatrists working with Chilean survivors of torture from political repression (Cienfuego and Monelli 1983). The testimony method has been used as a time-limited p sychotherapeutic intervention, often within the context of an extended , supportive psychotherapy. This method consists of asking individuals to tell in detail the story of their experiences of victimization fro m state-sponsored violence and recording their narrative accounts verb atim. Agger and Jensen's account of this method depicts testimony as a universal practice, appearing in multiple cultures and at different p oints in history (Agger and Jensen 1990). They also note that testimon y simultaneously functions in both the private and public domains; and as confession embodying the person's spiritual, ethical, aesthetic, a nd philosophical values, and as evidence documenting the occurrence of evil events to the world.