^a Director del Laboratorio de Psicología Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá - Colombia. milton.bermudez@javeriana.edu.co

Sacipa, Stella (compiler) (2015). Psychosocial Support to Victims of Forced Displacement. Bogotá: Editorial California-edit

This book is the result of a research and intervention practice that its authors conducted with populations victims of the Colombian political conflict for more than ten years.

Based on the legacy of Martin Baró, among other authors, the five chapters of this e-Book build paths for a systematic accompaniment through various regions of the country and in different contexts, where the experience of violence was common to all of them. Psychosocial support is characterized by focusing on personal empowerment of the emotional and social issues of those affected.

The first chapter (entitled as the e-Book) deals with the research work carried out by CEDEPAZ in Altos de Cazucá (Bogotá). Its work methodology provides the common thread throughout the chapter: the significance of ongoing forced displacement in the country is summarized in a very sensitive way through the participants' own experiences and opens new spaces.

In parallel, it is accompanied by the reflection required by the psychosocial support process for the population and the methodologies chosen to develop it. Distrust, despair, but then, reunion and reconstruction, are some of the feel- ings that, as a backdrop, finish coloring the text.

The second chapter, entitled Working with communities for research and psychosocial support, by Claudia Tovar Guerra, is a set of topics arising from the transformation of political culture, as well as from personal subjectivity, built from practice. The conceptual structure is somehow the result of fieldwork and also provides some practical information about the work of community psychology.

The third chapter, signed by Raúl Vidales and Otto Manrique, is an essay presenting methodological innovations for the psychosocial support of groups and communities facing socio-political violence. As with the work of Sacipa and other chapters, this text also focuses on the memory of the victims to re-signify their future. In other words, when coping with the horror experienced, the aim is to unravel again the ability to rethink a possible future. Interestingly, in these conditions, time must be as a continuum, where nothing of what happens is permanent. To complete the novelty of this work, it must be said that the authors are betting on creativity and the presentation of an innovative scenario with the use of techniques such as theater and audiovisual aids.

The fourth chapter, by Veronica Pardo Argáez, develops in an intercultural dialogue between indigenous populations and African descendants from Choco. With a clear and concise language, it poses as a major goal of any psycho- social support, the re-establishment of autonomy of those affected. With that in mind, it brings a detailed description of challenges in the light of reading the culture of those who have suffered violence. It emphasizes the need to think of specific spaces of various kinds, ranging from rituals for closures and openings, going through meditation spaces, others of entertainment such as weaving and sewing, up to spaces called "decompression".

The last chapter, by M. Paula Suárez Hernández, presents a series of workshops dedicated to mourning in cases of violent deaths with workers linked to the judiciary. The great objective of seeking recovery and emotional release is interesting, for it requires dignifying processes and enforcement of these people's rights. Different stages characterizing mourning are reviewed and then work is done on emotional repair. This reconstruction passes through the acceptance and ability to recognize the manifestations of their own grief as something necessary until rehabilitation is glimpsed.

In short, all chapters converge in the presentation of a model of community work with reflections and recom- mendations, so that psychosocial support is presented as a process with a defined profile. All chapters are based on the enormous need for respecting other people's grief, the need to rebuild trust in the other, the process of reconstruction of a possible future and the role of memory in all of this.

All texts are sensitive and endearing, and this contrasts with the fragility of psychosocial intervention work. The question of whether it is possible that a task of this nature is replicable in the extensive levels of coverage involving mil- lions of displaced persons, remains open, but indicates a start.

The challenge for the authors to overcome the difficulty of those displaced by violence finds a beginning in these pages. Here there is a sample of what will be the hard work that psychologists will have in the immediate future: reconstructing the deep distrust that those victims ex- perience and feel, and establishing new living spaces for them.

Finally, as stated in the formula, no less important is the introduction by Angela María Robledo, a member of the Chamber of Representatives for the Green party, but above all, a psychologist who for a long time has been committed to the processes of political psychology. The interview with her that has been transcribed, exceptionally frames the political realities of the country and the processes to be faced with the construction of a peace agreement. Against this background the role of the psychologist is analyzed. As she states: "The situation of the victims is above all, a matter of psychologists, because perhaps only in this area of psychosocial care, whether individual or collective, the empathy generated is our key to work with the other". "Neither silence nor distortion of the truth", she warns. And in that space "the political dimension of psychosocial care emerges."