Therapeutic workshops with women victims of sexual violence: Assistance to African refugees

Abstract

This experience report concerns the holding of therapeutic workshops with African refugee women, victims of sexual abuse. The workshops were planned and conducted based on Psychoanalytic Theory and combined three therapeutic dimensions: discursive, narrative and corporal. In discursive practices, personal reports, the relevance of testimony to alleviate the pain of invisibility was observed. Using narrative tools, symbolic resources were offered for the elaboration of traumas. And with the use of dance, we sought to integrate what cannot be achieved through words. The experience of African women with their own bodies revealed protective aspects of subjectivity in the face of sexual violence. Such findings suggest a valuable path forward in providing care to Brazilian women.