Torture is a public secret.
As refugees, survivors of torture are mostly class-less citizens. As patients they are, but virtue of their questioning of extremes, unclassifiable. As humans they are like all of us, although perhaps on the more courageous side of being. Ironically, therefore, the more deeply, the more frequently, and the more visibly one was hurt, the greater one's officially granted chances of immigration and survival. Psychoanalysts' responsibility to address those questions of the extreme is all the more poignant because modern torturers have come to utilize psychological principles such as traumatic bonding, regression, and double-bind techniques in order to destroy the individual's mind, body, and soul.