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A Crisis in the Subjectivity of the Analyst: The Trauma of Morality
Abstract
This paper explores the dilemmas that arise when treatment is offered in circumstances when spiritual and ethical survival comes into conflict with physical survival and material well-being. Through an exploration of the author's experience in South Africa's war of liberation, this conflict is explicated. Although these experiences are now historical, it is argued that they are pertinent at the current time as the West, following 9/11, finds itself encouraged to think in terms of war, as notions of both a war against the West and a war against terrorism have become part of many public discourses. Questions that may arise for us as relational analysts and as individuals as a result of this are flagged, and although no easy answers are proposed, the importance of this exploration is highlighted.
... How do people who have a black skin/identity see themselves now, how do people who have a white skin/identity see themselves now. Straker (2007) highlights when confronted with the black-white conflict in South Africa one is prone to dissociate. Thus the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a collective decision to host a national confessional space to disarm the dissociative mechanisms of South Africans-it ushered in a space for recognition and empathy. ...
... I also know that I despise people being hurt and prejudiced against. I get anxious and feel guilty when thinking about Apart-hate and these two binds of victim/survivor and perpetrator/bystander/beneficiary (Straker, 2007). And, when reading Krog's (1998Krog's ( , 2003Krog's ( , 2007 writings I feel like I am precariously straddling two eras and two identities: a child of Apart-hate and an adolescent/adult of Democracy. ...
... Because that is where my hell is' (Krog, 1998, p. 147). Ultimately, soldiers of both sides of the Apartheid war exist with their sense of childlike innocence in tatters (Straker, 2007). Krog, in coming face-to-face with the men of her cultural heritage finds herself confronting her own personal "long white shadow" that has become "the long white scar" (Krog, 1998, p. 400-401). ...
As South Africans approach nearly two decades of democracy, an appreciation of how far we have come becomes possible when we examine the occurrence of empathy within our intimate relationships and wider communities. It is to be argued that Ingrid Jonker through her poem The Child is Not Dead and Antjie Krog in her writings such as Country of My Skull (1998), A Change of Tongue (2003) and Begging to be Black (2009) have trailblazed the path for reconciliation for South Africans and other traumatised nations. Both Afrikaans-speaking women, through their penned resistance, created a necessary stir about Apartheid’s travesties against Black people by inducing a depth of feeling in the reader by foregrounding the metaphor of the innocent Child. By such evocation of the reader’s heart to feel into the Other a sense of trust, attachment, and humaneness is brought forth. Depictions of empathic resonance, within their literary works, will be traced to show how vital such close entwinement is for an authentic psychological reconciliation between individuals and collectives in a nation.
Keywords: Apartheid, Antjie Krog, empathic resonance, Ingrid Jonker
Presented on the 8th of December 2012 at the 3rd International Multidisciplinary Conference Engaging the Other: Breaking Intergenerational Cycles of Repetition, at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
... As analysts have begun to address and write about racial identity and racial enactments in therapy (e.g. Altman, 2009;Straker, 2004aStraker, , 2004bStraker, , 2007aStraker, , 2007bSuchet 2004Suchet , 2007aSuchet , 2007b, the extent to which the impact of race is denied, largely by white therapists, and the significantly negative consequences of such denial for individual therapeutic progress as well as for the perception of psychoanalysis by black and lower class populations, has come into sharp relief. Race and racism emerge in the therapy room, not inside individuals, but enacted in the analytic relationship. ...
... This inevitability is picked up by Straker (2004a) who argues that analysts need to be aware of not only negative but also positive stereotyping which is also a denigrating of the other by repressing difference and thereby denying the subjectivity of the other. What is striking in these and other similar contributions (Straker, 2007a;Suchet, 2007b) is the honesty with which these women explore the otherness within, frequently admitting to complicity in racist and stereotyping thoughts and behaviours. Perhaps it is this honesty that allows for the transformative experiences that they describe, transformative for themselves as therapists as well as for their patients. ...
Psychoanalysis has become increasingly concerned with issues of race and class and the ways in which they play themselves out in the therapy room. Alongside other psychosocial scholars concerned with the interleaving of the self and other, the psychological and the social, I argue that psychoanalysis is a valuable resource, particularly, as demonstrated in this article, for thinking through how we might theorize and “read” race and class in interview contexts when conducting qualitative research. Interview moments between myself, the researcher—a White, middle-class, educated, South African woman—and the researched—Black, working-class, lesser educated, South African men—are subjected to a psychosocial reading drawing specifically on Lacanian psychoanalysis which emphasizes a critical, tentative approach that aims to disrupt understanding.
... Likewise in psychotherapy: Varga and Krueger are aware that capacity in the therapeutic situation or system for "dyadically distributed emotional regulation and interactive repair" ( 2013 , 287) may depend precisely on the therapist's ability to maintain and manage quite different affective states and processes from those of the patient. Even when the therapist deploys certain forms of synchronous behavioral matching and nonverbal convergence as part of the process, she is simultaneously refl ecting on and working with bodily, affective, and cognitive responses that may diverge dramatically (for a striking example see Straker 2007 ). Yes, the therapist must be richly and subtly responsive to the patient, maintaining an intense kind of cognitive-affective interdependence or coupling in which what each party says, does, and feels makes an ongoing and dynamically sensitive difference to what the other says, does, and feels. ...
This article presents our collaboration as supervisee and supervisor at the Changing the Conversation Conference held in New York City, March 2019. We address racial enactments in supervisory dyads, the absence of institutional holding, and the barriers to speaking candidly about these experiences. We locate these struggles in race as a “forcefield,” in which experiences of difference collide in ways that can both transform and threaten cherished aspects of identity. In the process, we reflect on how legitimate concerns about confidentiality can, in this context, mask analysts’ desires to protect their access to normative privilege, institutional power, and facilitate avoidance of their own racialized shame.
Freud declared that psychotherapists should handle erotic countertransference by means of repression. Yet there is much shame in therapists about the occurrence of sexual desire. Subtle psychological boundaries are required to handle desire which has been allowed to form. Having a secret desire partitions us, where one part of us knows something another part of us does not know. The solution for this is a combination of conscious use of a reflective form of detachment and mindful partitioning called ‘facework’. The therapist must be willing to be found by the client, not cold, which will do damage to the intersubjective reality of the client. So facework must be conscious, tailored to the psychoaffective history of the client. There is a split between being and seeming; one knows but does not show. Some therapeutic qualities necessary in the handling of sexual desire in therapy are summarized in this chapter.
These brief remarks introduce the symposium on Power and Authority, with clinical material by Francesca Colzani and discussions by Irwin Hoffman, Susanna Federici Nebbiosi, and Gillian Straker. I am glad we have the opportunity in this symposium to discuss power and authority in the clinical situation, because while this subject has been a center of interest for relational psychoanalysts since the inception of the relational perspective, explicit attention has not been paid to the topic in the recent past. Yet power and authority are always present and always important in our activities—in every clinical session, every supervision session, and every page we write. This symposium is composed of an incisive and moving clinical report by Francesca Colzani, followed by discussions by Irwin Hoffman, Susanna Federici Nebbiosi, and Gill Straker.
Winner of the 2012 Gradiva Award!
In times of stress, trauma and crisis—whether on a personal or global scale—it can be all too easy for us to externalize a larger-than-life figure who can assuage our suffering, a Hero who comes to the fore even as we recede into the background. in taking on our collective burden, however, such an omnipotent Hero can actually undermine us, representing as it does the very same characteristics we fail to note in one another. By granting the Hero to power to set things right, we seem to deny it to ourselves, leaving us temporarily lightened but ultimately helpless.
The literature on psychological trauma and traumatic attachment has progressed over the past few decades, however issues of coerced and internalized perpetration have not been fully explored and deconstructed. This book presents a synthesis of relational and archetypal psychology, trauma and dissociation theory, and highly relevant child soldier literature, to offer new clinical perspectives to assist psychotherapists and trauma patients to achieve more successful therapy outcomes. The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep offers instructive, cautionary and innovative therapeutic approaches to help transform the lives of survivors of complex trauma. Providing an explanation of how the effects of coerced perpetration trauma are built, and the damage done to the psyches and lives of most trauma victims, the book extends our knowledge base in a thorough deconstruction of the nature of perpetration and its effects on the psyche. Chapters include: - trauma, dissociation, and coerced perpetration. - the child soldier as a model of internalized perpetration. - relational concepts in the treatment of trauma and dissociative disorders. - treatment trajectory. - archetypal constructs as a vehicle for integration. This book provides valuable new perspectives on the psychodynamic challenges and opportunities for mental health professionals treating internalized perpetration in survivors of complex trauma, and will prove essential reading for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and post-graduate students as well as researchers, legal scholars and policy makers.
When both therapist and patient have shared the experiences of living in contexts of extreme and continuous trauma, the effects of this will be woven into their relationship and their work together both at a conscious and an unconscious level. This paper explores these effects in the sensitive and insightful case studies presented by Castillo and Cordal as they struggle to come to terms with the aftermath on the dictatorship in Chile. Parallels are drawn with work in South Africa both during and after Apartheid.
In this paper I utilize the concept of “double consciousness” as a framework for theorizing the subjectivity of the immigrant analyst. I invite the reader to journey with me as I deconstruct my experiences as an immigrant analyst in North America in order to depict how “double consciousness” shapes subjectivity. I show that I developed a binary, bifurcated analyst self, despite my wish to become a multicultural analyst who could “stand in the spaces.” This subtly clouded my clinical judgment causing me to side with the immigrant boyfriend of an American patient and to ignore significant differences between myself and a French patient because he too was an immigrant. When I named and processed my “double consciousness” I experienced resignification, my subjectivity was reconfigured, I was able to experience a panoply of selves, a hybrid “me-ness,” and I could recognize and address “double consciousness” in my immigrant patients.
My reply to the commentaries first addresses the question of the relations between psychoanalytic theory and practice. Drawing on the ancient Greek concept of theoria, I expand on this question by evoking a third register, that of psychoanalysis as a collective that theorizes and practices in a particular socio-historical context. I argue for a view of psychoanalysis as a collective residing at the intersection of general discourse, social power, and subjectivity, a position that should be consciously considered as part of its ethos and its ethics. I examine in this context Stern's notion of clinical philosophy and the potential for a variety of dialogues between clinical psychoanalysis and critical theory. I look at the unique possibilities offered in this domain by relational psychoanalysis, and argue that mining these possibilities may require that we explore new kinds of theoretical narrative. Looking at the history of the psychoanalytic theoria, I raise the question of theoretical and clinical activism. Given its discursive and social position, what is the responsibility of psychoanalysis vis-à-vis individuals and societies? How might it address what Kafka refers to as collecting and uncollecting? I conclude in turning to psychoanalysis' own collective trauma, the destruction during World War II of its German-speaking centers, and the theoretical-political shifts that followed, as its central European pioneers became exiles in the now dominant centers of the United States and the United Kingdom. I suggest that our collective trauma might hold some clues for our contemporary limitations, and potentials.
Suchet's paper is an inspiring demonstration of the power of openness and vulnerability. It offers a clinically daring and theoretically far-reaching account of the transformation that can sometimes occur in the psychoanalytic relationship. My commentary focuses on two of the paper's major threads: the interplay of subjective experience, intersubjective space, and collective forces, and the ethical dimension of the psychoanalytic project. From the outset, the meeting between Ara and Suchet is not only a meeting of bodies and minds, but also a meeting of collective histories and politics. Suchet finds, and in her account powerfully demonstrates, that addressing her patient's trouble requires an exploration of how collective traumas and political narratives infuse the possibilities of intersubjective exchange and subjective meaning. In my commentary I trace and elaborate on the trajectory of this analytic process, contemplating the ways in which identities and identifications involve both familial and social attachments. I attempt to highlight Suchet's contribution to our understanding of how what happens, and is made meaningful, in the register of collective identification and experience, forms the very substance of subjective and intersubjective life, and should be therefore formulated as an intrinsic aspect of the analytic endeavour. Turning to Suchet's engagement with the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, I consider her drive to reach beyond the traditional boundaries of psychoanalytic discourse. Following the same drive, I add some ideas developed by Theodor Adorno, as means of illustrating the trouble and the potential for reconciliation inherent in the experience and politics of identity.
Within a burgeoning literature on the survivors of catastrophic trauma, there is an increasing focus on therapists' reactions to these survivors. Within this tradition, the present paper examines the responses of a group of therapists working with survivors of South Africa's political repression and civil conflict. It highlights how, in this context, both the potential for retraumatization of survivors, as well as the potential for direct traumatization of the therapists, intensifies these reactions and complicates their resolution. The similarities and differences between this particular context and other contexts of trauma within which therapists may work are discussed.
The title of this paper employs a pun (“not” and “knot”) to emphasize that a relational (k)not negates truly intersubjective dialogue by shutting down the spaces, between and within persons, for mentalization, reflective functioning, genuine affect, and negotiation.In treatment, relational (k)nots appear as repetitions that—unlike Russell's “crunch,” with its intensities of crisis—coerce states of noninvolvement between patient and analyst. Persistent relational notting produces a crisis of mutual detachment. After offering in this paper a developmental perspective on the etiology of relational (k)nots based on parental failure to mentalize the child's separate subjectivity, I offer an extended clinical vignette to illustrate notting and subsequent disengagement between patient and analyst, and I suggest potential analytic approaches to untying the (k)not.
This discussion compares Pizer's concept of “relational (k)nots” with “crunches” and double bind impasses. It argues that all of these constructs capture what happens when conventional analytic method—the exploration, elucidation, and interpretation of transference—fails to work. In this context a “last-ditch effort” emerges, a necessary crisis of treatment. The situation is a plea that something must occur “now or never” or the “charade of therapy is over.” This plea is extraordinarily challenging since it embodies contradictory elements wherein the patient's very call for involvement with the analyst is embedded in a process that obfuscates their connection. Notably this sets the stage for the “damned if one ‘gets it’ and damned if one doesn't” experience that is a part of the paradox of recognition/mis-recognition that befuddles many analyses.Extrication from such impasses requires the analyst's recognition that she is colluding in a kind of avoidance or distraction from recognizing their disconnection. Her second act involves meta-communication about their process. That is how their “relational knot” both binds them together while negating their connection. While this observation may be necessary it is recognized as insufficient on its own. Thus her third move out of the impasse requires her to enter into a state of improvisation. That is, to use some part of herself that must surrender from the one-up one-down impasse position of “either your version of reality or mine.” Instead, she must cultivate through her action a third way in which both she and her patient can think about their impasse and do something about it, including something different from what either one might have imagined before.
Discusses the experiences, attitudes, and transformations of returning Vietnam veterans, using material obtained from interviews and conversations with the returnees. The "warrior myth" is discussed in terms of how it affects the psychological makeup of the soldier before and after his involvement in combat. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Lives of the Australian Undead
- C Savage
Savage, C. (2005), Lives of the Australian Undead. Griffith Review, 7:107–115.