What is Psychoanalysis doing in the World of Social Justice? Commentary on Gobodo-Madikizela

I want to begin by thanking Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela for bringing the issue of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa and the perplexing, troubling, and provocative questions it raises into psychoanalytic discourse in such a compelling and thoughtful way. The issues she grapples with are not easy from a political or ethical viewpoint, and to add the psychoanalytic perspective makes the charge she has set for herself daunting indeed. I cannot possibly do justice to this rich and thought-provoking discussion of the process and dynamics of the TRC, so I will confine myself to a schematic overview and then give my thoughts on some of the most relevant points for psychoanalysis and the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and the TRC or any societal or political healing process. Gobodo-Madikizela wishes to extend her observations beyond the particular circumstances of the South African situation to any effort to establish some form of justice after what she calls gross human rights violations.

She discusses three topics. First, the TRC established a unique dialogical space within which the deep fissures gouged in the nation of South Africa by apartheid could be healed. In this part of the paper, Gobodo-Madikizela describes the invitational nature of the TRC, which distinguishes it from tribunals that have the purpose of finding, trying, and punishing abusers. It is this welcoming approach that she feels creates a unique dialogical space in which perpetrator and victim can face each other. As the perpetrator discloses his crimes, survivors and other perpetrators are both in the audience, a situation that marks out the South African experience as unique among tribunals of justice covened after gross violations of human rights.

Gobodo-Madikizela’s second point is that the process and success of the TRC can be understood in psychoanalytic terms. Here she believes she is breaking new ground by using analysis outside the clinical context. As the history of psychoanalysis is a history of neglecting the role of societal structures and influences in emotional distress, Gobodo-Madikizela sees the application of analysis beyond the consulting room as new territory for the field. She sees some hope in a recent panel of the American Psychoanalytic Association on the silencing of discussions of race in APsaA.

Using Kleinian concepts primarily, but including some reference to Kohut and Winnicott, Gobodo-Madikizela employs these concepts to understand the success of the South African healing process. From the Kleinians she borrows the concept of splitting, noting that the demonization of black people and the idealization of whites by the white power establishment under apartheid is splitting on a societal level. The public nature of the TRC hearings constituted a holding environment within which both victim and perpetrator could confront the trauma of apartheid. The TRC, by bringing together the two groups, victims and perpetrators, fostered the recognition of both good and bad traits in each group by the other, rendering possible an integrated view by each of the other group. That is, as whites see the suffering of black people, black people become more real, more fully human to the gaze of white people. Black people are no longer uncivilized savages just itching to rob, steal, and kill at the slightest provocation. Analogously, as black people hear the stories of white conscription they can feel empathy for at least some whites. The goal of the TRC, then, can be conceptualized as the healing of splitting to form an integrated state that constitutes a movement from the paranoid-schizoid position, characterized by splitting, to the depressive position, in which split objects become integrated. Thus, the invitational nature of the process can be understood as a facilitating environment or, specifically, a transitional space within which the previously unsayable can now be said. The disclosure in this environment by the perpetrator allows the victim to have some empathy for at least some of the abusers. A psychoanalytic understanding then uses self psychological and Winnicottian concepts in addition to the overarching Kleinian framework.

Gobodo-Madikizela’s final section is devoted to the importance of remorse for mourning and forgiveness, as well as to how issues of empathy, remorse, and forgiveness played out in the TRC process. One of her central points is that remorse is a special moment of recognition of the self in relation to the other, one that is critical to the mourning process. The public disclosures before the victims and other perpetrators brought forth remorse from some former apartheid officials and representatives who disclosed their crimes against humanity. And it is this remorse that opens the possibility of forgiveness. If the perpetrator appears to express genuine remorse, the victim may feel empathy for the perpetrator and forgive him. While this possibility may seem remote, in fact it happened with some frequency during the TRC hearings.

The victims’ trauma testimonies are in themselves healing, as the verbal expression of the pain gives voice to unspeakable trauma. But the TRC would be neither innovative nor worthy of our extended attention had it been limited to providing a space for the expression of traumatized states. The expression is not simply a verbal outpouring; it is an appeal, a communication, in the first instance, to the perpetrators in the audience, and, as Gobodo-Madikizela so adroitly points out, ultimately the appeal is to the wider South African society. So the intended audience is not only those in front of the victim as she speaks, but the entire society, many of whom heard the proceedings as they were broadcast on TV and radio. The pain can be relieved as it is given over to others to see, feel, and even absorb. Some victims feel they have given their trauma to others to hold. The testimony may make an impact on the listener, and this effect on the “second listener” is key to healing the trauma.

Empathy tends to emerge spontaneously during disclosures and witnessing of crimes. Witness the black mothers who embraced the white mother whose son, a conscript in the South African Defence Force who had been lied to by superiors, died while fighting liberation forces in Namibia. These mothers bonded as mothers, and in that experience their common bond as mothers transcended their differences in color, background, and history and their stands of opposition to each other during apartheid. Gabodo-Madikizela uses this story to show the importance of empathy in forgiveness and the spontaneous way it tends to appear.

All of this, according to Gobodo-Madikizela, offers an alternative to the cycle of violence typically so pervasive in the aftermath of gross human rights violations. This cycle is even today being played out in the gang warfare that infects our inner cities and can be seen in emergency rooms as young men enter wounded or worse from retaliatory violence. It is to this cycle of violence and retribution that Gobodo-Madikizela’s paper is ultimately addressed. The lesson to be learned from the TRC is that the process of perpetrators’ disclosures and remorse, empathy on both sides, including that of victims with their abusers, and forgiveness by victims and survivors is the means used in South Africa to address the cycle of violence.

This paper suggests an alternative to the cycle of violence that tends to afflict nations that have suffered under brutal dictatorial regimes. It is Gobodo-Madikizela’s contention that the TRC found a way to confront the horror of gross human rights violations without engaging in denial or violent recriminations that would provoke ever more violence. Her thesis is that the process undergone in South Africa is a model for healing national wounds inflicted by such gross violations. She believes the TRC established a unique potential space that allowed perpetrators to confess and to express remorse, a process that made empathy from their victims, or from their victims’ surviving family, possible, once they were able to communicate their rage and suffering to those responsible for it. In this way a benign cycle of good will could take hold and replace the cycle of violence. This process, she suggests, can create new subjectivities for both blacks and whites. This model of confronting the horror of mass trauma, or some modification of it, has been used in similar situations, such as the Rwandan gacaca courts and other examples of restorative justice.

My first impression on reading Gobodo-Madikizela’s paper is that from a psychoanalytic view it is a culturally relative piece of work, on various levels. Though at first I was surprised to read that she believes that analysis has continued to ignore social problems and cultural issues, I soon realized she holds this view because her point of reference is the American Psychoanalytic Association and its journal. The fact is, however, that discussion of the social applicability of psychoanalysis is so common in Division 39 (Psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological Association and its journal, Psychoanalytic Psychology, that some complain that we have forgotten the analyst in the consulting room. Indeed, that journal has contributed to a burgeoning literature exploring race, ethnicity, and societal problems from a psychoanalytic perspective (see, e.g., Tummala-Narra 2014; Summers 2014; Yi 2014; Vasquez 2014). Nor is this literature an entirely new phenomenon in psychoanalysis, as Freud himself and many of the early analysts saw a strong connection between analysis and culture (Danto 2005). The current recrudescence of interest in this area is thus a return of psychoanalysis to its roots in the free clinics of Vienna and Berlin (Danto 2005). To say that Gobodo-Madikizela is unaware of this literature, both contemporary and historical, is not to criticize her, but to comment on the fractionated nature of contemporary psychoanalysis. The field is divided into subcultures that do not acknowledge one another (Summers 2008).

The second way Gobodo-Madikizela represents the schism in psychoanalysis lies in the nature of the analytic theory she uses to develop the relationship between psychoanalysis, empathy, and the wider society. Her almost exclusive reliance on Kleinian concepts renders her account of empathy problematic. In the Kleinian perspective, reparation of the object destroyed in fantasy is the basis for empathy because the object becomes a whole object through repair in fantasy (Klein 1937). But while the movement from splitting to whole objects is necessary for empathy, it is not sufficient. The awareness that an object has good and bad traits, while it overcomes splitting into simplistic categories, does not necessarily mean empathy for the object that is both good and bad. Empathy entails the recognition and appreciation of the other’s subjectivity, and the fact that in Kleinian theory this movement takes place in fantasy renders the process incapable of reaching the subjectivity of the other. Kleinian concepts alone cannot account for empathy because empathy implies contact with the other’s subjectivity. There is a theoretical gap in the leap from integration of the fantasied object to making contact with the other’s experience. Gobodo-Madikizela does bring in Kohut’s ideas, but not in a way that would explain the empathic process and its relation to mourning and forgiveness. I make this theoretical point because if empathy is to be relevant to the TRC or any similar process, that process must be grounded in a theoretically sound concept of empathy. Our theoretical subcultures easily blind us to the limits of our thinking (Summers 2008).

And this brings me to what I believe is the cutting-edge issue of this paper for psychoanalysis: Is there a psychoanalytic contribution to the healing of a nation traumatized by decades of brutality and gross human rights violations? As compelling as Gobodo-Madikizela’s paper is, and however many good and useful points she makes, the inclusion of psychoanalysis is an ex post facto explanation of what has taken place absent any psychoanalytic input. To explain the success of a public reconcili-ation procedure in psychoanalytic terms may be theoretically important, but it does not constitute a contribution to the process of healing between abusers and abused. In my view, the challenge for psychoanalysis is to show that it can add something to the healing process itself. Does psychoanalysis have anything to offer to a nation attempting to recover from decades of national hatred, violence, and trauma? If, for example, the TRC had used psychoanalytic consultants—if, that is, psychoanalytic concepts and understanding had been applied by the TRC—would the commission or the process it used have been any different or any better?

While some APsaA analysts believe the field is exclusively for the treatment of individual psychopathology, I contend, along with Gobodo-Madikizela and other contemporary analysts, that we have the conceptual tools to add a dimension of understanding to the healing process of nations recovering from gross human rights violations. The latter contention many consider a bold claim: that psychoanalysis has relevance for society beyond the consulting room and has a specific role to play in healing national tragedies.

In my view, however, the first position too readily accepts a limited role for analysis; one might well ask why the field should confine itself to a single application of its ideas. As I have noted, Freud (1933) and many of the early analysts considered the discipline as applicable to the social world as to the individual patient. The case for the applicability of analysis to the social order would seem all the more compelling when an entire society has been traumatized. Psychoanalysis has the conceptual tools to treat trauma by verbalizing its impact. In the words of one trauma survivor, “When someone speaks, it gets lighter.” As so well described by Gobodo-Madikizela, the TRC was in essence a cure by speech, not unlike the process undergone by the very first analytic patient, who dubbed the treatment “the talking cure” (Breuer and Freud 1895). With both Anna O. and the TRC, the therapeutic action lay in saying what was previously unsayable. In Gobodo-Madikizela’s view, the TRC established a space in which victims of abuse, or their survivors, could verbalize their experiences, their pain and suffering, in the presence of those who directed and inflicted that suffering, often involving the deaths of family members. In this same space, perpetrators could confess their actions and demonstrate remorse, as both sides spoke in the presence of both victims and perpetrators. Thus, while Gobodo-Madikizela quite correctly invokes Winnicott’s concept of potential space (1971) to characterize the unique interpersonal space created by the TRC, the presence of victims and perpetrators in the audience bearing witness to confessions and testimonies renders this space fundamentally different from the analytic space first established by Breuer in treating Berta von Pappenheim and deployed by analysts ever since. One of the many important points made by Gabodo-Madikizela is that the TRC process was successful precisely because it was public, and it is only in the public domain that the testimonies and confessions could be effective. No private communication would elicit the powerful feeling of remorse achieved in many instances by the TRC. Perpetrators of apartheid violence damaged and killed countless innocent people; their crimes were not limited to the individuals whose families were in their presence during the TRC hearings. As Gabodo-Madikizela notes, the audience for the confessions went beyond those present in the room to include the wider society via media broadcasting. Apartheid testimonies were heard in the streets and at home by black people who survived the brutality and murder of apartheid society.

In this respect, psychoanalysis is the very converse of the TRC: the analytic process is effective only under conditions of strict privacy and confidentiality. This principle is designed to save patients from the consequences of their speech, such as social embarrassment or retaliation from offended parties. Protected from such consequences, patients are able to free associate more easily than if they had to concern themselves with who might hear of their private thoughts and fantasies.

Despite this difference, the purpose of the two procedures is remarkably similar: both have as their intent the translation of what was previously unsayable into verbal form. The space in both situations is designed to allow maximum freedom for saying what has been unsayable by eliminating potentially harsh consequences for the confessor or patient. Of course we do not expect in either case that everything that could be verbalized will be translated into the verbal realm. What defines the space in each case is the intent to make all events verbal. Both processes require measures to protect the speaker from consequences in order to maximize the freedom that defines the potential space for both. While psychoanalysis relies on privacy and confidentiality to protect the patient from social embarrassment and thereby provides the proper environment for free association, the TRC depended on the granting of amnesty to protect former apartheid officials from prosecution, thereby establishing an environment conducive to public confessions and testimonies.

Although it is not usually thought of this way, an essential feature of both analysis and the TRC is that they are designed to achieve an ontological shift. What is hidden away in a corner of a mind or a society is perceived dimly if at all and therefore never feels real. Its translation into the verbal realm is not simply a topographic shift, but a new order of reality. What is now said and heard by the other exists on a new ontological level. The unsayable has now become real, and the apartheid perpetrators can no longer deny the brutality, sadism, and murder in which they were participants. Those for whom defensive rationalizations persist are failures of this system. Similarly, the analytic patient lives in a new reality when previously unformed unconscious affects and desires become part of the discourse between patient and analyst. The healing process of analysis does not necessarily require the resolution of unconscious conflict, but recognition of the conflict in verbal terms shifts the way it is experienced.

Neither the TRC nor psychoanalysis purports to resolve all the conflicts it confronts. Both, however, hope to make the conflicts conscious and have them expressed verbally. Though in analysis we hope to help patients reach a conclusion that overcomes the conflict, often the conflict is not resolvable. Many apartheid victims do not expect their anger and suffering to be resolved by bringing confessions into the public arena, but they feel better, “lighter,” from public discourse that acknowledges the crimes inflicted on them. In this process they feel listened to, heard, their screams and words no longer disappearing into the wilderness of a dictatorship indifferent to their suffering; now they are heard by human beings who absorb their pain and thereby afford them relief. Just so, many analytic patients have had to learn that they are not going to find a resolution to their conflicts, but that bringing them into awareness through verbalization removes their pathological edge.

The criterion of a communication’s effectiveness is how well received it is, and this is where psychoanalysis can make a significant contribution to a national healing process. Confessions and testimonies must be heard, and that means they must make contact with the subjectivities of those who listen. I take this to be the process required for what Gobodo-Madikizela calls the development of new subjectivities. The confession makes possible a response from victims or their survivors, and once this response is made, once the victims’ stories are told, remorse is possible. Then, and only then, will the victims be able to feel some empathy toward those who have abused them. This empathy, so crucial to the process of reconciliation, is not a resolution of splitting, although that too plays a role in healing. Empathy means making contact with the other’s subjectivity, and that is what may lead to the creation of new subjectivities.

The TRC, as Gobodo-Madikizela describes it, does not have a concept of what reaches the listener. The victims’ testimonies may or may not reach the experience of the perpetrators, and the perpetrator may or may not feel remorse. But in psychoanalysis we understand that empathy requires contact with the other’s subjectivity, and we can direct ourselves to that goal as analysts. If, hypothetically, we were to consult to the TRC, we would focus the process more on the intent to make contact with the other’s experience. Rather than leaving the empathic bonds to chance, we as analysts can help perpetrators and victims alike find ways to reach the other’s subjectivity. Analysts know how to form empathic bonds; now it is time to help heal social wounds by helping both perpetrators and victims make contact with each other’s experience. From empathy, healing takes place.