Search

“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.

In contrast, focusing on cultural traumas is less familiar and is less articulated in our psychoanalytic clinical theories, supervision, and practice in general but common to the publications just noted. In particular, 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.