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Genograms of Sickness and Health in Exile and Return Families - The Nescessity of Narrative and Psychotherapy Within the Framework of Medical Anthropology

The presented work is based on a four-year long-term follow-up of return families living in Zagreb, awaiting their return to Vukovar (1998-2002). During the course of this multifaceted research, the usage of the genogram (borrowed from the family psychotherapy method became very useful in achieving research agendas, while at the same time respecting the complex nature of the forced migration experience and the dignity of those that underwent its traumas. The problem of studying and presenting these complex experiences is heavily under the domination of medical discourses. Over the past decades the medical idiom has become the leading one in dealing with displaced, refugees and their underwent suffering. Furthermore, the danger of reducing the complex experiences to a matter of health issues if fortified through a frequent presentation of experiences by psychosomatic and other somatic dysfunctions. The method of the genogram helped in revealing the often obscured fact that the experiences are also of political, economical and cultural nature. It is also helped in identifying a number of diverse problems (welfare and health insurance issues, legal aspects, moral concerns, etc.) that all tend to be superficially glued to the cultural idioms, while in fact are a measure of a social force which inflicts the individuals and their families. In a wider perspective, the presentation of the ways in which the tool of research was adopted and the results it gained testifies that there are many efforts to be put into ones retooling and continuous "sensitization", in order to be a good researcher and amplifier of the problems that complex situations, such as that of exile and refugeedom present. It is also confirmed how the position of narratives and psychotherapy within the framework of medical anthropological investigations are becoming a growing necessity in a situation where there is a globally rising number of marginalized populations.

anthropology; critical medical anthropology; genogram; exile; return families

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