More on Story-Telling: The Cambodian Healer

Phaly Nuon is a Cambodian survivor of Pol Pot’s killing fields of the 1970’s. An educated woman who managed to disguise her origins and her learning in order to survive the mass murder of the educated classes, she witnessed the rape and murder of her teenage daughter and the starvation of her baby. She survived for three years in the jungle, trying to protect her two surviving children, living in isolation, hiding and eating only what she could forage in the jungle. She and one child walked out of the jungle. Her baby died.

While in the refugee camps following the war she noticed many women whose mental state made them virtually inert, unable to care for themselves or their children. Their PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) was going to kill them and their children. She set out to help them and developed her own system of psychotherapy which was remarkably effective. This woman has been on the short list for the Nobel Prize many times for her work with these depressed women as well as the development of an orphanage (the Future Light Orphanage), which the recovering victim/survivors run.

Phaly Nuon has a three part system of therapy (which actually has at least 5 parts).

1. She teaches the women to forget their atrocities. 2. Then she teaches them to work. Some of the work is with orphans who have lost their parents in the war. 3. Then, she says, I teach them to “love.’

Interestingly both she and Andrew Solomon (¬The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (http://www.noondaydemon.com/biography.html ). fail to notice that the first step is not the first step. The first step in her system of therapy, as Solomon recounts this, is the telling of the story of their ordeal. And then the re-telling.

I quote Solomon:
"First, she would take about three hours to get each woman to tell her story. Then she would make follow up visit to try to get more of the story, until she finally got the full trust of the depressed woman. "p.36

"Forgetting,"  involves getting them involved in their present life.

Step two, work, is an important part of that. And step three, teaching them to love, is all about focusing on relationship. The women that Phaly Nuon has ministered to have formed a healing community. Just as a footnote, Freud thought the ability to love and to work were the hallmark of mental health.   Evidently Phaly agrees.
There is another step, by the way. This is teaching the women to give manicures and pedicures to each other (!) This is the final phase and as a lover of pedicures myself, I can testify to the healing potency of this process, which is both intimate and impersonal.

This step, perhaps, represents the importance of engaging the body, in the healing process

This story, I believe reinforces the importance of story-telling in healing. Phaly took it as a starting point and created something truly amazing.

I first heard Andrew Solomon tell this story on the Moth broadcast on WNYC. Here’s the link: http://www.themoth.org/

For more on Phaly: http://emailfosterparents.org/PhalyAutobio.htm