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.