Challenging Empathy

Social workers and psychologists working in post-conflict societies are quite often confronted with trauma in their daily
working routine. Trauma might emerge during the exhumation of mass graves, in counselling victims of war, or within supervisory
case work and has to be dealt with in this professional, but non-clinical setting. The article explores theoretically, and
with the help of a case study, difficulties and possibilities of understanding complex trauma in supervision, focusing on
how to transform empathy into emotion-based understanding, and thus opening up new perspectives for solving conflicts. It
is stressed, however, that the understanding of trauma must be grounded in a sound knowledge of clinical trauma theory.