Invisible Wounds: Beauty, Love and Justice in Restoring the Mind with Richard Mollica

In a world where evil, greed and envy fuel wars, trafficking and exploitation, and where cruelty grows ever more refined, it is easy to lose heart. Yet there is another force, equally powerful and perhaps greater in its reach: the force of good. This episode is devoted to that truth, and to one of the people who embody it: Richard Mollica, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Trained in both medicine and divinity, he became a humble listener to the unspeakable. Over three decades, he and his team have cared for at least ten thousand survivors of extreme violence. He has also become a kindler of healers in more than eighty-five countries, all working to restore dignity and meaning, guided by hope and by his conviction that “there is no healing without beauty”.

“I always found lurking inside the patients a spark,” he tells us, “a little tiny light of hope and of love and empathy. And I try to build on that.”

Why is victim-blaming still so widespread? What is shame, and how is it passed down through generations? Can religion help with trauma? What role does culture play in healing, and can cultural memory be transformed? When people feel completely broken, what makes them begin to trust that they can heal?

Join us for a tender and deeply humane conversation in which the sacredness of life is not only highlighted but emerges naturally. Professor Mollica shares what decades of listening have taught him: why telling one’s story can be the beginning of recovery, and why the healers themselves need care.

An episode about the healing of invisible wounds, about resilience, love, empathy and justice, and about how hope can survive the very worst, with the people who help it find its way back; an episode that rewards deep listening with a quiet revelation: that beauty heals not only the survivor, but all of us.

Co-hosted by Jesuit priest and theologian Father Felix Körner, with readings from Dante’s Inferno and the poetry of Marjorie Agosín. With voices from Professor Vikram Patel of Harvard Medical School, a pioneer of global mental health; ecologist Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel; Italian photographer Domingo Milella, who finds in beauty and memory what has held humanity together through time; and Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon.

*Under Richard Mollica’s direction, the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma pioneered refugee trauma as a subspecialty of modern psychiatry, and its screening instruments, translated into more than thirty languages, are considered a gold standard in the field. His honours include the Human Rights Award and the Kun-Po Soo Award from the American Psychiatric Association, the Max Hayman Award from the American Orthopsychiatric Association, a Lifetime Achievement Award from Harvard Medical School and the Lux et Veritas Award from Yale Divinity School. He is the author of Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World and Manifesto: Healing a Violent World.

Books: 

• Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World (Harcourt, 2006; paperback, Vanderbilt University Press, 2008)
• A Manifesto: Healing a Violent World (Solis Press, 2018)
• Manifesto IV, Healing a Violent World: The Will to Heal and Survive in an Apocalyptic World (2022)
• Textbook of Global Mental Health: Trauma and Recovery, A Companion Guide for Field and Clinical Care of Traumatized People Worldwide (Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, 2011)
• Trauma Story Assessment and Therapy: Journal for Field and Clinic (Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, 2011)
• Sun and Moon: A Khmer Journey, with S. Tor, adapted and illustrated by Doug Anderson (2011)

Links and Information: 

https://researchers.mgh.harvard.edu/profile/14158853/Richard-Mollica

https://hprt-cambridge.org/team-members/richard-mollica

https://healtorture.org/presenters/richard-f-mollica/

Social Media: 

Facebook: Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma 

Instagram: @hprtcambridge

E-Mail: hprt.gmh@gmail.com

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