With the recent events initiated by our government, it is sometimes hard to see that peace begins at 'home,' by integrating hate and love within ourselves. My friend and colleague, Martti Siirala, years ago wrote about the collective splitting processes accounting for racism, societal violence, genocide, mental illnesses and the transgenerational transmission of traumas (which get 'taken up' into the transference in psychoanalytic therapy). We all have a 'stanger within' (as pointed out by Kristeva and many others) - as Martti related-we are all somewhat alienated and estranged from the ground of our being (he told me that forgiveness of oneself and others helps to heal such deep splits within our being). As many spiritual traditions have pointed out, peace truly does begin at home. Perhaps, this country's propensity to launch into non-justified wars is a reflection of the deep cynicism, mistrust, paranoia and collective splitting which can 'possess' a country, not just an individual.
As Winnicott pointed out, the psychotic part of the personality attempts to organize towards invulnerability to ward off profound feelings of vulnerability. The individual and collective enemy within, gets exported to another individual, ethnic group, country, etc. To attempt to integrate this 'enemy within' is to move from the paranoid/schizoid position to one in which authentic mourning processes and guilt can be worked through. Our mourning for what happened on 9/11 quickly moved towards blind retaliation, omnipotence and violence.
Wishing inner peace to all on our listserve and a year ahead for this country in which the 'soft voice of reason' (Anna Freud) can once again be heard.
Brian Koehler
Martti Siirala:Psychotherapy as Dialogical Interweave
Martti Siirala (1983- From Transfer to Transference: Seven Essays on the Human Predicament, published by Helsinki University Press) has cogently written on the transfer of burden, sociocultural and familial traumas, which, if all goes well, moves from isolated trauma into the transference, becoming part of the shared dialogical interweave, the human solidarity grounding the psychoanalytic praxis. This view of transference, along with the Freudian and total transference situation of the post-Kleinians, seems to me to be a valid one based on my psychotherapeutic experience with more disturbed individuals.
Martii Siirala defines therapy as follows: “Therapy ensues when, the following takes place, what in itself is the very natural and yet remains an exception among us. I mean that the appeal and message inherent in each human predicament, also met as illness, exceptionally reaches an ear - with the result that the other accepts to listen to it together with the afflicted and remains faithfully in that place, prepared to share it with the other.” And I would add, light is shone on both as a result of this dialogic interweave restoring the human tissue connecting the previously darkened isolated existences (inherent in the human condition but brought to greater light through the intersection of mutual anxieties and traumas in the transference-countertransference relatedness) of both as they, together, live through the transfer of burden.
Brian Koehler
