ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one attempt to draw together different attempts to ‘apply’ psychoanalysis, and to gather bodies from different traditions together in order to debate what this might look like. A living, breathing, flesh-and-blood laboratory was formed to explore whether psychoanalysis as a treatment of individuals can be ‘applied’ to collectives, institutions and societies, and we can see here conceptions of trauma, even the ‘chosen trauma’ of particular social groups. This putative application of clinical theory to social issues raises a deeper clinical and political question, whether psychoanalysis is a practice of reconciliation or one of bearing unending conflict.
