Discussion of Bakó, T. & Zana, K. “The Reality of Trauma; the Trauma of Reality”

Abstract

ABSTRACT This discussion of Bakó & Zana’s paper, “The Reality of Trauma; the Trauma of Reality,” will be organized in several parts: the first will summarize their promising ideas, integrating large systems with psychoanalysis; the second, will roughly outline some shortcomings; the third, will highlight some salient differences between the Hungarian and American socio-political contexts and provide a discussion of the author’s evolution toward a socio-centric psychoanalysis. This conception of a socio-centric psychoanalysis, in addition to addressing the impact of the social unconscious on the traditional consulting room, seeks to move psychoanalysis outward – outward to group interventions and socio-political deliberation – culminating in two experimental practices: the “psycho-social citizenship dream group” and whole systems change relying on social dreaming and systems psychodynamics applied to “deliberative democracy.”