FALL 2021
The Original Split in America, Seth Allcorn and Howard F. Stein
Abstract: In this article the original split in America’s psych-social-political founding, the left versus right, is explored using three complementary theoretical perspectives. Vamik Volkan’s transgenerational model of chosen glories and traumas contributes insight in terms of understanding the enduring nature of this split over the centuries. Anthropological perspectives are used to contribute insight by their emphasis on understanding psychosocial and cultural dynamics from the inside out and the outside in, and how these dynamics may be understood relative to other cultures. Object relations theory contributes the foundational notion of an original split in ideology leading to the cultural, social and political polarization we find that exists in America in 2021. This level of polarization must be respected for its resident complexity and its historical roots but also its projection across centuries to create the current trauma that has arisen between waring political tribes.
The Original Split in America
The exceptional polarization in the United States in 2021 is not new but it has been exploited by the right, the far right, and radical right. Many right-of-center moderate conservatives have dropped their GOP affiliation, or at the minimum have become critical of the evolution of the party away from traditional views, ideologies, and values (Allcorn & Stein, 2019). Especially attention-getting is the emergence from the fog of coded words (dog whistles), of blatant racism and open white supremacy. Confederate flags were on display in the halls of Congress January 6, 2021. For its adherents, maybe there is still hope that the South will rise once again? ….
Trump’s Presidency in 2020: Psychohistory Viewed through Epiphanies and Masks, Dan Dervin
Abstract: Having over time encountered the methods, styles, and approaches practiced by Journal contributors, in this article I consider ways in which the epiphany could offer a useful device for organization, emphasis, and insight. A perennial rhetorical device, once enhanced by biblical associations to the Presentation in the Temple, epiphanies in our secular context may offer a range of assets. Our secular cultural processes, for example, may be sharpened by our psychohistorical epiphanies. During our researches, we may flag a nucleus in the material we’d been studiously encircling. It’s that Ah-ha! moment concentrating and rewarding one’s protracted attention. The device may then bind a multi-layered complexity. It may help focus insights arising from the overdetermining psychoanalytic discourses that encompass such unconscious processes as repressed and ensconced in our dreams, fantasies, and memories, along with one’s resistances and defenses. Our textually inserted epiphany may also grant readers a reflective pause for assimilating new depths and bridges. Thuswise, it may refresh attention and open further pursuits to reinforce or recast assumptions. Explored here among other areas are some fruitful interplays of masks and epiphanies. Their affiliations augur distinctive insights into the broader psychohistorical import of Trump’s psychic makeup for ongoing inquiries.
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“I’m a total act and I don’t understand why people don’t get it.” —Trump to Anthony Scaramucci in A Very Stable Genius by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, New York: Penguin Press, 2020, p. 289.
I first became intrigued by how President Trump as both actor and director addressed shaky polls by way of stage-managing his leadership image. Geared to reassure voters, his self-validations trumped facts and became his fail-safe strategy. As fallout, others were often left to grapple with political behavior that overlapped psychological acting-out, though his Base seized opportunities to enact their own agendas….
Working through the Armenian Genocide in Present Turkey: A Psychoanalytic Social Psychologist’s Perspective on Transgenerational Transmissions of Guilt, Angela Moré
Abstract: Not only wars, but also genocides and crimes against humanity have shaped and shaken the 20th century. Their traces can still be found today in the psyche not only of the people affected, but also of their descendants. Particularly as a result of the Holocaust, psychoanalysts became aware of the effects that traumas of the victims had on their descendants. They had introjected the anger and shame of their parents in the emotional atmosphere of their families.
Later, psychotherapists also discovered feelings and inner images of violence and war in the descendants of perpetrators. They often talked about diffuse feelings of guilt and shame, which are sometimes repelled by division and denial, but nevertheless cause psychological conflicts.
The descendants of Turkish families do not only struggle with the official denial of the genocide of the Armenian population in World War I, but, they also question their own family history and whether and how their grandparents were involved. Here, too, massive conflicts and feelings of shame in the face of this historical past become apparent, leading to internal, but also social conflicts, unless they can be integrated and thus overcome.
Keywords: Genocide; World War I; Transgenerational transmissions; Turkey; Psychoanalysis; Sense of guilt; denialism; offspring of offenders
Creativity and Mental Illness: Vincent van Gogh as the archetypal figure, Pedro Mota
Abstract: Art and madness seem to have much in common. The realization that creativity interrelates with psychiatric disorders is taken as an axiom in modern Western culture. The stigmatization of people with mental disorders has persisted throughout history, and Vincent van Gogh, author of the most sensational works of the post-Impressionist current, seems to illustrate this question since it remains one of the human minds that more curiosity and admiration raise in the present times. The article aims to address the possible association between creative development and the presence of psychopathology by taking a look at the multiple interpretations of the life and work of artists such as Van Gogh.
Keywords: Art; Creativity; Mental disorders; Psychopathology; Vincent van Gogh.
BOOK REVIEW ESSAY
Crafting a Social Psychoanalysis: Social Effects and Narcissism, Kareen Ror Malone
Lynne Layton, (2020). Towards a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious processes. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-367-90204-9
Crafted by the chemistry of theoretic, clinical, and autobiographical perspectives, Layton promotes and expands upon the necessity of introducing a political and social horizon into psychoanalytic and psychodynamic work. Towards a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious processes is an essential read, certainly in relational circles but also as a point of conscience and debate within other approaches, both within the United States and internationally. In Leavy-Sperounis’ glowing preface of this collection of pivotal papers by Layton, the editor praises the path towards civic engagement Layton forges in her re-casting of the way in which one appropriates and expands the psychoanalytic frame. In Layton’s view, many psychoanalytic concepts are too confined by the tradition of clinical parameters that aim towards the singular, too often translated as the specifics of the individual, her past and her private qua intimate experiences. Certainly, in Layton’s mind, such experiences are not excluded. Singularity does not foreclose its necessarily collective moorings. Layton’s collected papers in a way trace Layton’s own increasing broad vision of what psychoanalytic praxis entails and implicates, including how one hears and intervenes in relationship to the realm of the collective – meaning economic, ideological, and social-political representations and forces that she reminds us, sustain inequalities on all levels.
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