1st Edition

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Social Trauma The Inner Worlds of Outer Realities

    230 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    230 Pages 8 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Social Trauma presents a thorough introduction to social trauma from a range of perspectives, exploring several key themes, specific causes and symptoms and clinical interventions.

    With chapters from a diverse range of authors, the book considers social trauma as it relates to stories and history, group identity, the consulting room, migration, and post-traumatic conditions. These topics are explored via a range of frames, including individual therapy, group analysis, social dream matrix, large groups, case studies, narrative recollections, and cinematographic expression. The book also considers the implications of new technology in causing and treating social trauma.

    A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Social Trauma will be of great interest to psychoanalytic psychotherapists in practice and in training, psychoanalysts, and psychoanalytically informed professionals working with trauma.

    Part I: Trauma Stories and History

    1. Finding my Song: Trauma, Discontinuity and the large Group

    Teresa von Sommaruga

    2. Recovering Dignity: the remarkable history of Dr. Rosenberg and Dr. Goldowski

    Wojtek Hanbowski

    3. A wound within a wound within a wound: Social Dreaming in Jerusalem

    Or Netanely, Hanni Biran, Judith Ezra, and Hannan Sabah-Teicher

    4. Scenarios of the Social Traumata in the post-communist Romanian Cinema

    Cristina Călărășanu

    Part II: Group Identity and Social Trauma

    5. Group-analytic identity challenged by Social Trauma

    Jelica Satarić and Bojana Mitrovic

    6. Experience of Large Group at the National Congress of Serbian Psychotherapists

    Snejana Kecojević, Vida Rakić-Glisić and Jelica Satarić

    Part III: Social Trauma in the Consulting Room

    7. The Echoes of Social Trauma in the consulting room

    Ivanka Dunjić

    8. Recalls of the traumatic and pacts of denial in psychoanalytic group psychotherapy

    Klimis Navridis

    9. Bequeathing Trauma

    Mariagrazia Giachin and Juliana Marin

    10. Rapid Social Change and Individual Identity

    Gianluca Biggio

    Part IV: Migration and the paths of Trauma

    11. Telemachus' predicament: trauma and emotional rupture in the relationship between immigrants and their left behind children

    Lida Anagnostaki and Alexandra Zaharia

    12. Subtle paths of trauma in migrating families

    Daniela Lucarelli and Ludovica Grassi

    Part V: Posttraumatic Conditions: new theoretical and clinical approach

    13. Psychotherapy of Posttraumatic Conditions

    Sverres Varvin, Tija Despotović and Vladimir Jović

    14. The impact of Social Trauma on Group-analytic Theory

    Morris Nitsun

    15. Traumatic Experience: Restoring Mentalizing in Group Psychotherapies

    Ulrich Schultz-Venrath

    Part VI: Pandemics and the outer world traumatic impact

    16. The child, the adolescent and the therapist: playing and the pandemic reality

    Eftychia-Evie Athanassiadou

    17. Estrangement and intimacy in the time of Zoom

    Mary Morgan

    18. Distance, fear and intimacy in COVID Time

    Gila Ofer

    Biography

    Cristina Călărășanu is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist based in Romania. She is president of the Romanian Association for the Psychoanalysis of Group and Family Links, IACFP (International Association of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis) General Secretary and Scientific Council Member, EFPP (European Federation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy) Board Member and Chair of the Couple and Family Section.

    Ulrich Schultz-Venrath is Professor of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at the University of Witten/Herdecke, Germany, and a psychoanalyst and training group analyst, working in private practice in Cologne, Germany. Until March 2021, he was chair of the group section of EFPP.

    Hansjorg Messner is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in London, UK. He is a senior member of the BPF (British Psychoanalytic Council) and BPC (British Psychotherapy Foundation), as well as Vice President and Chair of the adult section in the EFPP and board member of the federation.

    "This is an impressive book of high relevance for the general audience. Social traumata – from marital and family violence, from rapes to warfare – burrow deeply into psychic structure, personal and group identity, into our ability to learn and love and to enjoy new experiences. Violence makes people silent. Primo Levi's horrific experience was that no ear wanted to listen what had been done to him in Auschwitz. Being silenced is a new social trauma. This book valuably contributes to the task to open public reception and therapeutic ears to what has been silenced – it’s a must-read for the future of the helping professions."

    Michael B. Buchholz, Professor, International Psychoanalytic University, Berlin, Germany

    "First delivered in 2018, these selected psychoanalytic reflections on the problem of social trauma are needed even more urgently in 2022. Focused on the clinical aspects of working with persons who have experienced the acute pain of forced immigration, separation, and loss (and many more), in both individual and group forms of treatment, this book will be necessary to everyone engaged in psychoanalytic psychotherapy – as a guideline, as inspiration, and as a source of support."

    Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, PhD, International Psychoanalytic University, Berlin, Germany