At the train station: the self, suspended in collective trauma. Symbolic analysis with victims of childhood trauma caused by state terrorism

Abstract

This paper explores the consequences of a collective trauma on the individual psyche. The author aims to show the difficulties emerging in the process of working through an early trauma when the personal wound is merged with a family and cultural trauma. Referencing clinical dream material, the author also highlights the importance of including the objective and the subjective levels of analysis, because if the clinical work is solely focused upon the intrapsychic subjective dimension, this may tend to perpetuate the traumatic cycle based on the original denial. This process requires from the analyst sensitivity and receptivity to accept the reality of the collective trauma with all its overwhelming affects, without losing the capacity for imagination; thus, the horror of the non‐representable may gradually find – within the analytic dyad – a symbolic way to be retrieved, metabolized, and elaborated.

Collective Trauma, Implicit Memories, the Body, and Active Imagination in Jungian Analysis1

“…Involving the body of both patient and analyst in the analytic process allowed not only for relational emotional repair, but also for those early life‐enhancing and life‐affirming processes linked to the affective experiences of the nuclear self—which precede the establishment of language—to be recovered. Confronting and elaborating these powerful defences, which Vera came to identify as “my inner military man” (Fleischer, 2022, p. 138), was also necessary for her conscious personality to reconnect with the vitality of her primary‐implicit‐nuclear self, through the action and experience of the proto‐self. A fundamental element required for this to take place, is creating a safe and supportive relational field where the patient can feel safe in our presence (Kalsched, 2020).…”

“…In a previous paper, presented in April 2021 at the Latin American Conference of the Journal of Analytical Psychology , I described the double challenge posed when early traumatic experiences merge with collective trauma: Differentiating her own wound from the wound of those that preceded her (Fleischer, 2022). Recovering memories of an early self that were brutally taken away from her. …”

“…An early experience of positive attachment allowed that archetypal hope to become constellated, providing a foundation not only for future relationships with others but also for a lively and fertile connection with her imagination—which served as a refuge that enabled her to survive the years following the initial trauma. On the other hand, both the irreversible loss of her mother and father, as well as the denial of the existence of this early history and the subsequent abuse she received, gradually overcame the resilience of her early developing self, giving rise over time to an exceedingly autonomous ego, functioning in the grip of powerful dissociative defences (Fleischer, 2022). These archaic defences silenced Vera’s healthy outward attachment instincts and the inner connections between her mental and affective life.…”