ABSTRACT
It is with a sense of great appreciation to be asked to write the introduction to these four very moving, challenging, and informative papers on collective, historical, and state-sponsored traumatic oppression, as well as the resulting intergenerational transmission of that trauma. These authors represent a new wave of psychoanalytic thinking that challenge the criticism made by Bulhan (1985) that castigate psychoanalysts as: “Uninterested bystanders in the history and status quo of oppression. On the contrary, establishment psychologists have not only been active participants in social oppression, but also silent beneficiaries of many of its privileges” (p. vii). Such a privileged status may also constitute a fundamental barrier to understanding the traumatic legacy of the other and serve as a motivation for our continuing to “other” them. This barrier also serves a containing function against knowing one’s own collective traumatic past. It therefore seems to require that we reach beyond the immediate social milieu of our patients and that we must come to understand the present as well as the particular historical context from which both the analyst and the patient have come through. This stance then precludes any pretext of neutrality. The authors in general document the impact of horrific events across generations, the traumas are in the words of Seeley (2008): “Like phantom limbs that can still be felt even though they no longer exist” (p. 1). It is also evident that none of these conceptual depictions of trauma are given any clinical credence in the DSM-5, however, by all historical indications perhaps they will be included in the DSM-10. All of the authors give recognition to having been in one way or another impacted by historical or collective trauma of their own era. These authors conspicuously avoid common sentiment and moralistic posturing that would eliminate the
possibility of their personal reckoning, as well as that of a psychoanalytic understanding. These authors through their narratives take us on very personal and traumatically stressful journeys that require incredible courage, self-reflection that speak to opportunities of social liberation. They all seem to echo Bettelheim’s (1984) remark, “What cannot be talked about can also not be put to rest: and if it is not, the wounds continue to fester from generation to generation” (p. 166). Bettelheim’s comment mirrors the analysis of Franz Fanon, the psychiatrist from Martinique who studied the effects of Black oppression, who argued that it was not simply the body that had been imprisoned but also the psyche had become colonized by the oppressor resulting in a non-articulated social melancholy (Oliver 2004). Throughout these articles the powerful case is made on the clinical necessity of confronting the other within ourselves, as well as learning from those that we have Othered. In order to consider such an undertaking, one must be prepared for the fury with which such an undertaking will unbridle of one’s own fragmented sense of self. This is no simple intellectual exercise or clinical feat and can result in painful dissociative and confusing states of mind. It is only through such interpersonal engagements that the unknowable and the unspeakable can become known. According to Kakar (2014) anything less invites the dangerous illusion of minimizing his personal cultural impingement into clinical scenario. What the clinician needs is not “cultural competence” in the patient’s cultural background but an “awareness of the assumptions underlying his own, that is the culture he was born into and the culture in which he has been professionally socialized as a psychoanalyst” (p. 28). One of the very unfortunate results of trauma is the sense that our lives are left without meaning or purpose. These chapters illustrate that broken ties can be mended in order to move from a sense of being socially disposable to that of being a member of the family of the community.
