Learning about/from psychoanalysis

“Freud (1937) proposed that certain conflicts could not be treated in an otherwise successful analysis because those conflicts were ensconced inaccessibly in the patient’s “psychical underworld” (p. 231). If it were possible to unearth them, it would be unethical to do so because “fresh suffering” (p. 232) would be imposed on the patient. To wit, Freud warned, “we should let sleeping dogs lie” (p. 231).”“what is less focused on is an acknowledgment and articulation of the layer within the psyche that contains and secrets crimes of humanity and their history”“concluded that the concept of authoritarianism is valid and that the hypothesized relationships among authoritarianism, racism, … and sexism have been repeatedly confirmed”“we have to consider the pull on psychoanalysis of dominant cultural trends, even when they are adverse to our transformative, liberating ideals. In that vein, to this day psychoanalytic institutes around the world seem inclined to organize as authoritarian structures and thus framed, to debate endlessly and unresolvedly from extreme “right” and left” authoritarian positions”“Institutionally, psychoanalysis has used dissociation, rationalization, silence, and rigid authoritarian organizational structures to limit dissenting voices. We have also used projection and projective identification.”-tools created and defined to ensure those in power can control the narrative“This case example is offered against the backdrop of what the field of psychoanalysis does and does not offer for such work, and how what we do and do not get from living in and being trained as psychoanalysts in our respective cultures is internalized within us. It is my view that the relative ease and/or difficulties in working with cultural factors, including trauma, in treatment derives from the particular dynamics of the participants in the dyad, including the cultural dynamics: We each live in our cultures, which in turn live within us.”“(a) Psychoanalysts still maintain individual and institutional identifications with the silence established and promulgated by the founders of psychoanalysis; (b) psychoanalytic institutions maintain defenses against embracing these factors—the defenses include dissociation and projective identification, and (c) it is difficult to work clinically with cultural trauma because of the first two factors just summarized and because most cultures continue to perpetrate and condone crimes against humanity”