ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how subjectivity is linked to macro-level factors. It draws on intellectual traditions such as philosophy, anthropology, history, cultural memory, and genocide studies to wrestle with estranged world processes that manifest themselves clinically. The chapter investigates the link between macro and micro processes of world history with the concept of apres-coup and the intrapsychic conflicts intrinsic to the drives themselves. It argues that personhood can only be understood by extending the mind's horizon to real world processes and events within real world history on macro, local, and intrapsychic dimensions as they interface with the drives. The analyst is an American who lived in Germany in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and the patient is someone who remembers her participation in Arab racism while living in Israel as a child. The patient's catastrophic excess deeply affects the analyst.
