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Psychoanalysis and Trauma: September 11 Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

M. Gerard Fromm
M. Gerard Fromm*
Affiliation:
Erikson Institute for Education and Research, Stockbridge
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Abstract

On November 9, 2002, a few hundred people, mostly mental health clinicians, gathered at the New York University Medical Center for two days of discussions on the theme, September 11th: Psychoanalytic Reflections in the Second Year. The conference was sponsored by the five New York Societies of the International Psychoanalytical Association. The presentations described various bits of learning that seemed to be emerging from the crisis clinical work with so many traumatized people since the attack on the World Trade Center. This paper discusses three of those presentations in the context of the author's reflections based on his psychotherapeutic work with very troubled patients in a therapeutic community setting. He emphasizes the effect of trauma, not only on individuals, but on the holding environments and symbolic order on which human beings depend for their psychic survival.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , August 2004, pp. 3 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2004

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References

Notes

1. Erik Erikson, Life History and the Historical Moment, New York, 1975.

2. M. Gerard Fromm, ‘What Does Borderline Mean?’, Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol. 12, No. 2, Spring 1995, pp. 233-45.

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4. Françoise Davoine and Jean-Max Gaudillière, History Beyond Trauma, New York, Other Press, 2004. See also Diogenes no. 202 (2004) for articles by Davoine and Gaudillière on the theme of madness and its reasons.

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8. Erik Erikson, ‘The Problem of Ego Identity’, in G. Klein (ed.), Psychological Issues, New York, International Universities Press, 1959, p. 133.

9. Jonathon Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1995.

10. Susan Coates, Daniel Schechter and Elsa First, ‘Clinical Work with Parents and Children after September 11th’.

11. Donald Winnicott, ‘The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship’, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, New York, International Universities Press, 1965.

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13. Donald Winnicott, ‘Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena’, in Collected Papers: Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis, New York, Basic Books, 1958.

14. Donald Winnicott, ‘Fear of Breakdown’, International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 1974.

15. John Muller, Beyond the Psychoanalytic Dyad, New York, Routledge, 1996.

16. Lauren Silverman and Elizabeth Hirky, ‘Changing Places: Thematic and Countertransferential Shifts in Working with Survivors of Both the 1998 African Embassy Bombings and the 2001 New York Terror Attacks’.

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18. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, New York, Hill and Wang, 1981, p. 75.

19. Donald Winnicott, ‘The Observation of Infants in a Set Situation’, In Collected Papers: Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis, New York, Basic Books, 1958.