Social Activism's Possibility through Perspectives of Gloria Anzaldúa,Walter Benjamin and C. G. Jung1

This paper explores the vertices of Jung's, Anzaldúa's and Benjamin's distinct ontologies and the way in which they connect in the shared recognition that what has been estranged in human history is enigmatically lodged in the world's fabric today. Cultural distress, in other words, is the outcome of what has become repudiated in the self and the collective across time. From this perspective, the paper argues that we have a collective responsibility to listen to the claims of the dead laid bare in moments of contemporary real-world danger and it elaborates the psychical dimensions of being that are cultivated in times of danger. The author contends that these psychical presences are the dead of human history including our ancestral heritage that linger and possibly may penetrate our awareness. They haunt and hold a potential to animate our movement towards a sublimatory process that can be seen as a precursor to social responsiveness and action. The author explores this through her own experience with an example of the spawning of spiritual activism within the socio-political maelstrom of AIDS.     

The Holocaust and Its Effects on Survivors: An Overview

The Nazi Holocaust has had continuing and widely reverberating consequences not only for the Jewish survivors but for the world at large. These consequences are detailed, first through a personal account of an Auschwitz survivor, and then through a discussion of the adaptive measures of concentration camp inmates and the long-term psychiatric and psychological effects on survivors and their families. The Survivor or Concentration Camp Syndrome and its relationship to the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is described. Indirect effects of the Holocaust have been manifested in various ways, particularly through various levels of psychologic denial displayed by Holocaust criminals and (at least during the early postwar period) by the German public. The Holocaust has had profound effects on the ways the Jewish people regard themselves and are seen by others. Finally, the Holocaust can be seen as offering a kind of paradigmatic signature to the worldview of the end of the 20th century, emphasizing the persistence of evil and the limitations of the idea of progress.     

A bribe, “living-bread,” and a white tablecloth

This article describes marital therapy with a Holocaust survival couple in which the wife's demands for living bread plays a highly symbolic role in the marital dynamics. The author draws interesting parallels between the experience of the couple and the meaning of the therapy experience for herself.     

The reception of Holocaust research in the world of psychology

After having spoken to lay and professional audiences in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, England, France and in the United States on the effects of the Shoah on people in psychotherapy today and found varying reactions, I decided to pursue the question in a more consequential way. I devised a questionnaire which I sent to a large number of international psychoanalytic societies. My initial impressions were confirmed: Freudian societies generally devote more work to the topic. Some Jungian societies with especially interested individuals have also devoted a substantial amount of work to the Shoah and its aftermaths. The Jungian hesitancy has to do with our often more archetypal approach and with shame about Jung's statements on the Jewish archetype. On the collective level, the presence of a survivor population seems to make research on the topic more difficult. A certain amount of time must evolve before a society (be it professional, individual or political) deals with collective trauma, be it the Shoah or political oppression. On the personal level, intimacy (also in future, adult relationships) seems blocked when fantasies about parents' implications in the Shoah prevail. The bottom line of both phenomena is taboo, a prohibition against touching tameh. I propose that the IAAP supports research projects on the Shoah. They could also, as the Freudians do, offer a special prize at each international conference for the best piece of research on the topic of collective trauma.     

《圣迹图》版本初探

多年来 ,研究孔子的专书中涉及《圣迹图》版本研究的几乎没有 ,且为之介绍的专文也难得一见。《圣迹图》有绘本、石刻本、木刻本三种类型 ,乃为画家及刻梓者出自以垂永久之思 ,以求望图而知所考据 ,入室如见其人之感受。从中国版画史的角度来看 ,《圣迹图》中孔子形象 ,为后人运用想像力 ,揣摩当时的情景 ,选取孔子生平事迹中最为人所津津乐道的难忘情节创造出来的。本文就传世的各种版本及内容作一些考证及探讨。     

Psychological Distress and Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Jewish Adolescents Following a Brief Exposure to Concentration Camps

We investigated the psychological impact of an organized visit to Polish concentration camps on Jewish-American adolescents. Eighty-seven adolescents who participated in a B'nai B'rith memorial visit to concentration camps in Poland completed measures of general psychological adjustment and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at four time-points: pretest, posttest, 6-month follow-up and 12-month follow-up. Measures included the SCL-90-R, the Mississippi Scale for PTSD, and the Impact of Events Scale (IES) for PTSD. On the SCL-90-R, changes in somatization, interpersonal sensitivity, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, depression, anxiety, and phobic anxiety were observed over time, with peak symptom scores at posttest and 6-month follow-up. Scores on the Mississippi Scale for PTSD and the IES Intrusion subscale also increased at 6-months. Predictors of PTSD symptoms on the Mississippi Scale included previous psychiatric treatment and SCL-90-R symptoms of paranoia, depression, and psychosis. Elevated psychotic symptoms on the SCL-90-R predicted PTSD symptoms on the IES. Jewish adolescents with preexisting symptoms of generalized distress or psychoticism appeared at increased risk for PTSD symptoms following exposure to Holocaust stimuli. This study contributes a prospective, multi-measure assessment of trauma reactions in adolescents.     

Silvano Arieti's novel The Parnas: A scene from the Holocaust

Silvano Arieti was an Italian psychoanalyst who undertook psychoanalysis of schizophrenic patients in the 1960s and 1970s. He left Italy in 1939 at the age of twenty‐four following the Race Laws of 1938, and moved to New York until his death in 1981. A training analyst and author of several psychoanalytic and academic books, Arieti kept his research open in a wide variety of directions, giving equal weight to the internal world – as it seen from the psychoanalytic viewpoint – and to the organic functioning of the brain, as viewed from the perspective of the neurosciences. Arieti's interpretation of schizophrenia helped to overcome the dichotomies between the classical psychoanalytic approach, neurobiological research, and research into cognition, and opened up new paths for an interdisciplinary understanding of mental functioning and creative processes. This paper examines Arieti's book The Parnas (1979); this is a partly‐fictionalised account of a pre‐eminent figure (Parnas in Hebrew means “head”) in the Jewish community in Pisa, Giuseppe Pardo Roques, in the 1930s and early 1940s, who experienced mental illness and was killed in the Nazi extermination of Jews. The paper examines Arieti?s reflections on what he sees as the ‘insights’ provided by mental illness, which are considered through the figure of Giuseppe Pardo Roques, and in the context of the trauma of the Shoah in Italy.     

Thoughts on representation in therapy of Holocaust survivors1

This paper presents the problems of representation and lack of representation in treating Holocaust survivors, through clinical vignettes and various theoreticians. The years of Nazi persecution and murder brought about a destruction of symbolization and turning inner and external reality into the Thing itself, the concrete, or, in Lacan’s words, ‘The Thing’. The paper presents two ideas related to praxis as well as theory in treating Holocaust survivors: the first is related to the therapist’s treatment of the Holocaust nightmare expressing the traumatic events just as they happened 63 years previously; the second deals with the attempt at subjectification, in contrast to the objectification forced by the Nazis on their victims.     

Can learning about the Holocaust be spiritual? Reflections on a teaching and learning experience with Primary School children.

In April 2017, I spent a week in Poland researching the Holocaust in Europe. Most notably, I visited the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. Following the visit, I facilitated three History lessons with 10- and 11-year-old children on the role of Auschwitz in the Second World War. As the sessions unfolded, the spiritual themes of meaning, identity and remembering emerged from the children’s responses; therefore, this article forms a reflection on how the lessons impacted the children’s spiritual lives. It also considers how the History curriculum might include a critical dimension to pedagogy. In particular, it explores how issues such as theology, morality and the role of representation open up a space for critical questioning. I suggest that such questioning is also spiritual. Thus, the self-awareness and criticality inspired might contribute to transformation – of both the teachers and learners and the world around them.     

Why theatre-based research works? Psychological theories from behind the curtain

While many scholars have demonstrated the effectiveness of theatre-based knowledge mobilization, fewer studies have examined its psychological dimensions. This article examines some psychological theories that may account for the success behind theatre-based knowledge mobilization. Drawing from the Canadian Experience Project, a study about the labor market challenges of skilled immigrant workers, we show how theatre-based research dissemination efforts attempt to achieve optimal stress by using aesthetic distance processes. We maintain that this psychological capacity to attune to audience members, especially evident in forum theatre, makes theatre a particularly effective means for knowledge mobilization.