Spring 2014
“Chosen Trauma” and a Widely Shared Sense of Jewish Identity and History, Howard Stein
“You are not obliged to complete the work, but neither are you free to evade it.” (Avoth 2: 17) — Rabbi Tarfon of Lydda and Yavneh
INTRODUCTION: THE DIALECTIC OF THEORY AND CASE STUDY ….
This paper explores certain aspects of Jewish identity by focusing on a widely shared (though certainly not universal) perception and experience of time and history among Jews. It builds on my earlier studies of Judaism, Jewish history, and Jewish identity (Stein 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1983, 1984, 1994, 1995, 2006, 2009), which I shall not repeat here. The present essay presents the pioneering model of “chosen trauma,” “chosen glory,” and related concepts, formulated over the past two decades by Vamik Volkan, and explores Jewish history and identity as a kind of historical “test case” for this model. Volkan’s concepts are used to help explain the role of the memory of calamity, and the specific narrative forms that memory takes, in Jewish identity. I shall first present Volkan’s model in detail, mostly in Volkan’s own words, and then explore its dovetailing or “fit” with a widely held Jewish sense of history.
This paper explores certain aspects of Jewish identity by focusing on a widely shared (though certainly not universal) perception and experience of time and history among Jews. It builds on my earlier studies of Judaism, Jewish history, and Jewish identity (Stein 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1983, 1984, 1994, 1995, 2006, 2009), which I shall not repeat here. The present essay presents the pioneering model of “chosen trauma,” “chosen glory,” and related concepts, formulated over the past two decades by Vamik Volkan, and explores Jewish history and identity as a kind of historical “test case” for this model. Volkan’s concepts are used to help explain the role of the memory of calamity, and the specific narrative forms that memory takes, in Jewish identity. I shall first present Volkan’s model in detail, mostly in Volkan’s own words, and then explore its dovetailing or “fit” with a widely held Jewish sense of history.
I emphasize from the outset that the account that follows does not apply to all Jews, living and deceased, but rather to the continuity of a pattern that has long been widely shared among Jews (Gonen 1975, 2005; Falk 1996, 2004; Rappoport 1999). It is a cultural “master narrative,” but not an exclusive one. Even in our time of tribal and religious retrenchment and regression, moments of transcendence are still possible.
Here, I explore a widely shared sense of Jewish identity and history as refracted through the “lens” of Vamik Volkan’s concept of “chosen trauma” and related concepts. After delineating Volkan’s model, I then describe, with the help of Avner Falk and Jay Gonen, some of the core dimensions of Jewish identity and experience of time, including the perception, and for many the experience, of time in Jewish history as an unbroken line of cataclysms, and the condensation of all Jewish enemies since the Exodus from Egypt, into the unbroken lineage of Amalek. I shall argue that for many Jews, national-ethnic-religious historical traumas, in addition to being individually memorialized, some into “chosen traumas,” are also fused or condensed into a unitary vision of all Jewish history. I then turn to speculate on links between widespread experiences in Jewish childhoods and the belief in the continuity of catastrophe, through the intertwining of (1) the intergenerational transmission of trauma and (2) long-standing family violence in patriarchal Jewish families over the centuries.
The data sources for this essay are two-fold: (1) scholarly writings and published work from the public domain, both print and Internet; and (2) my own experiences and recollections as an American Jew born in western Pennsylvania in 1946. In the latter case, the paper is autoethnography.
On this autobiographical note I must add that I have been trying to “get it right” with respect to Jewish identity and history for forty years. At best I have been understanding more of the puzzle, piece by piece. I also know that a large part of the slow process has been my own resistance. Throughout this time, I have also learned much from others – despite myself. In the present paper I have come to understandings of which I was emotionally incapable forty years ago
Capitalist Profit and Intimate Life: A Cruel Couple, Harriet Fraad and Tess Fraad-Wolff
Abstract: Psychohistorians need to look at the psychological consequences which are coupled with America’s economic conditions. This article focuses on the interaction between the US economy and American’s intimate personal lives. Massive social changes in the US labor force and in commerce have transformed the economy and powerfully affected personal relationships. Since 1970 we have changed from being a society of people connected in groups of every kind, to a society of people who are too often disconnected, detached, and alienated from one another (Putnam, R. 2000, Fraad, 2006, Fraad, 2010).
One is the loneliest number, and in their personal lives, Americans are increasingly alone (http://www.unmarried.org/statistics.html#living-single).
What has happened to us?
Domestication: The Dawn of Parenting and the Enduring Human/Animal Link, Dan Dervin
Introduction: If we peer through the lenses of paleontologists and anthropologists into our earliest prehistory, we may glimpse at how the origins of our species were inseparable from the origins of childhood.[i] The name of the game is survival and for evolutionary biologists that means transmission of genes from one generation to the next, which in turn entails optimally low mortality rates among offspring. Parenting enters the picture piecemeal along the way as rudimentary forms of infant-nurture and childcare evolve. Setting the stage, Sarah Hrdy places a premium on pools of maternal caregivers and the “cooperative breeding” deemed “alloparenting” among hunter-gatherers.[ii] Such practices diverge from the vast majority of primates whose females do not engage in peer networking and fiercely guard their offspring. But while males “remain year-round in the same social group as females with whom they have mated,” their roles are to protect against predators and other marauding males and to mind the baby in mother’s absence.[iii] Extrapolating from data on contemporary hunter-gatherers, she draws a sharp dividing line from other species for these mothers who “trust others and allow them to take their infants shortly after birth.”[iv] This requires a new trait. Empathy is factored in as a capacity for reading unspoken needs in others’ faces; significantly, alloparented offspring enjoy relatively high survival rates.[v]
While valued, the active presence of fathers with offspring up to age two doesn’t improve survival so long as a pool of female relatives are on hand,[vi] but to their credit, these fathers do interact with offspring over longer sessions than typical U.S. fathers who compensate with shorter and more intense interactions. In central Africa, Aka parents take infants and children along on hunting trips, and in camps fathers form intimate ties to their young.[vii] But after age ten, children find the paternal presence diminishing. In Hrdy’s sampling, roughly only a third of children grow up with fathers.[viii]
A Psychological Profile of Elian Gonzalez, Colin A. Ross
My psychological profile of Elian Gonzalez is based on the structure and facts of the situation, which I have obtained from newspapers, television, and magazines. This information is well summarized in a Wikipedia article1. I will describe the conflicts and mental state I would expect to see in any 6-year old boy exposed to the extreme trauma undergone by Elian Gonzalez.
The seeds of a future suicide bomber or terrorist were planted in the psyche of this young Cuban boy by the trauma he experienced in 1999. Terror begets terrorism, whether its victim is a Cuban, an American, or an Arab.
Sigmund Freud’s Literary Ego Ideals, Jacques Szaluta
FREUD’S ECLECTIC READING TASTES
Among the many remarkable aspects of Sigmund Freud’s voluminous writings and correspondence is his eclectic literary taste. It is not just that Freud read widely, but that he read creatively, searching among the great works of literature for personal meaning and direction, as well as for the advancement of psychoanalysis. Freud’s interest in literature was compelling indeed; it ranged from the ancient to the modern and transcended national boundaries. The catholic nature of Freud’s reading can be highlighted by noting that the authors he read, favored, or used as sources to buttress psychoanalytic theory were American, Austrian, British, French, Danish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Swiss, as well as those from the classical Greek and Renaissance periods. He was also interested in non-Western literature, including Arabic and Sanskrit. However, in surveying Freud’s literary culture, I do not intend to present a critique of Freud’s theory of literature. Rather, my aim in this article is to examine Freud’s interest in literature from a new perspective, and that is to study Freud’s interest in certain writers as a search for intellectual models – – or ego ideals. In other words, the aim here is to study what this exceptional man read, and, more importantly, why? It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider all the fiction writers that Freud liked; therefore, only a few representative writers will be selected to be discussed in detail, those who were to him most inspiring or influential.
The Rising Power of Japanese Woman a Pop Culture Revolution, Joan Lachkar
According to Kenneth Adams (2112), nothing has changed in Japanese society. In spite of its economic growth, Japan still remains a masochistic and sacrificial society. Men are programmed to sacrifice themselves to the workplace and women to the home and children. He refers to this as the “salaryman” mentality — an archetype of the Nihonjin warrior – with the same type of aggression translocated to a new generation. Economically, there has been a financial boom. Women are more active in the workplace, and the desire for home and marriage is of less importance. Adams states that instead of Japanese males showing devotion to the master, an inherent identification with the warrior/sword mentality, identification has now shifted to the workplace. On the surface it appears as though they have relinquished their undying loyalty to the master by abandoning their swords, but basically the “slavish devotion, self sacrifice, and masochism still remains as a vestigial remain”.
In my recent book, The Disappearing Male, I refer to this as “The Disappearing Male syndrome (DMS) — an entire culture of men adhering to the same collective group fantasy — reverence to the master e.g., Allah. Even though he wears a new suit with different armor, he is still hard wired to be a warrior. He sacrifices his life for his boss, his company and even to his wife and children. As the common wisdom of Japanese housewives goes, “a good husband is healthy and absent,” teishu wa genki de rusu ga ii.
The Scope and Limits of Psychohistory, a book review essay by Brian D’Agostino
The Psychology of Genocide and Violent Oppression: A Study of Mass Cruelty from Nazi Germany to Rwanda, Richard Morrock, London: McFarland and Company, 2010. Richard Morrock’s encyclopedic analysis of mass cruelty in the 20th century—which spans 16 societies—belongs in every psychohistorian’s library alongside the writings of deMause, Miller, Strozier, and Beisel. In Europe, the book examines Germany, Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia, and Italy; in Asia—China, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey; in Africa—Algeria, Sudan, Rwanda, and South Africa; and in the Americas—Argentina and Haiti. The unity of this compilation of studies, apart from the theme of violence, consists in its systematic application of a typology and theory of trauma drawn from the work of Arthur Janov, a healer whose methods and ideas benefitted the author personally. In this typology, “first line” trauma encompass perinatal experience and early infancy, while “second line” trauma are associated with later childhood experience.
BOOK REVIEW
Is There Life Without Mother? Psychoanalysis, Biography, Creativity, Leonard Shengold. Hillsdale, N.J: Analytic Press, 2000, Reviewed by Neil Wilson
Shengold offers the reader an exciting journey covering many scenarios. He expands upon his previous topic of soul murder as it applies to two prolific authors, Jules Renard and Anthony Trollope. Additionally he addresses the question of creativity and its likely healthy origins. Throughout he exposes the reader to the biographies and works of the two aforementioned authors, a treat in and of itself.
The book starts by describing the biographer as being in another impossible profession, [training children, politics and psychoanalysis are the 3 listed by Freud]. He is aware of its highly selective nature. Quoting Edel (page 6) “the biographer is far from anonymous. He is present in his work as the portrait painter is present in his.” Shengold is thus alerting the reader, and himself, that he will pay close attention to those aspects of Renards and Trollopes lives that reflect his theoretical interests. Ditto for this book reviewer.
Soul murder is the result of parental abuse and neglect so prevalent as to adversely and severely affect a child’s emotional development. Their suffering continues to dominate their fantasy life and life decisions by unconsciously repeating the traumas they had experienced….