Psychoanalytic Reflections on an Experience of Australian Aboriginal Culture

Abstract

The paper represents reflections on the experience of a week spent as part of the Scientific Advisory Committee of CASSE (Creating a Safe Supportive Environment), as a guest of the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress Aboriginal Corporation (CAACAC). The reflections were based on a methodology of "psychoanalytic observation" processed with reference to the ideas of Bion, Ogden, Bolognini, Fairbairn and Scharff and Scharff. A key reflection concerned the significance of the rupture of the traditional cultural container to the current provision of mental health services. A further reflection was on the importance of the functioning of the CASSE/CAACAC reconciliation-based partnership and how this might be enhanced by integrating Scharff and Scharff's (1991) dyadic version of Fairbairn's "Endopsychic Model" and Bion's concept of the container-contained relationship into a theoretical framework about its functioning. At the level of delivery of mental health services the importance of a focus on the commonalities between the Aboriginal and psychoanalytic worldviews is stressed.

Facilitating Recognition: Listening to You, Dreaming Together

“…The implication of these issues for me is that no meaningful dialogue about recognition and reconciliation, and in turn no transformation, can take place without an acknowledgement of the importance of these containers (Country and Dreaming) and the central container of traditional culture which binds them together as a “mega‐container” that allows for meaningful links between alpha elements (thoughts), which can lead to a coherent sense of identity, being acknowledged (Keogh, ).…”

“…The idea of the container-contained addresses the dynamic interaction of predominantly unconscious thoughts (the contained) and the capacity for dreaming and thinking those thoughts (the container). (Keogh, 2014) 3 | INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA AND THE RUPTURE OF THE CULTURE CONTAINER.…”

“…At these points, the other party can become defensively and unconsciously split, with the result that good feelings towards the other become lost and are then viewed as negative and frustrating. In my adapted model (Keogh, ) perceptions of the other are viewed as bi‐directional. What is helpful in such situations are processes which encourage awareness of these regressions and splits and a capacity to manage them which the application of the Endopsychic Model facilitates.…”