Uprooting and after

The unifying theme in this book is the suffering of millions of people, and the attempts of many others to ameliorate such sufferings. A host of world-renowned medical and social science specialists describe their experiences with people who have been beaten, battered, tortured, displaced and uprooted, but have somehow survived those ordeals. From these experiences arose new insights into the problems of uprooting, a new appreciation of the concept of "cultural relativism", and a new terrifying glimpse of the limits of "man's inhumanity to man". The relevance of this book lies in the fact that such ordeals are by no means absent in our world today. In this sense then, the experiences presented and evaluated here serve to bring to focus for us as individuals concerns of all mankind. Through its explicit treatment of diagnoses, prognoses and therapeutic measures the book, however, offers hope, a hope which is much needed in our conflict-torn world of today. W F. Angermeier Professor of Psychology Heidelberg, 1973 v Acknowledgments We express our sincere appreciation to all those who made this book a the authors, the publishers, the translators and the printers. For many of us this undertaking was a valuable and rewarding experience despite the numerous complications and delays caused by correspondence; ideologic, political and professional differences between the undersigned; revisions, and technical diffi­ culties inherent in an intercontinental bookproduction.