Abstract
The idea that in so far as we cannot and will not remember the past, we are doomed to repeat it, has been expressed and discussed by philosophers, historians and social scientists, as well as contemporary psychoanalysts and group analysts in Great Britain and elsewhere. They have raised interesting questions about collective memory (which used to be called, very unfortunately, ‘racial memory’), and the collective compulsion to seek revenge. This has been the focus of the study of the social unconscious, including the study of the dynamics of large social groupings and the personification of them, some aspects of which have been inculcated by parents whose hands have rocked the cradle, and some of which have been shaped in more diffuse ways (e.g. Ormay, 2012; Hopper and Weinberg, 2011; Hopper, 2003a; and Dalal, 2002).
This work has been given renewed clinical substance by Dr Prophecy Coles in her highly accessible collection of her own papers evocatively and appositely entitled The Uninvited Guest from the Unremembered Past (2011). A psychoanalytical psychotherapist with a background in sociology, Dr Coles examines some of the patterns of transgenerational socio-cultural inheritance of traumatic experience embedded in the projective processes of traumatized parents. Tentatively, she also considers the effects of traumatic experience on the brain, and, therefore, possibly, by implication, on the genetic inheritance of such experience. She is vitally concerned with using psychoanalytical psychotherapy in order to relieve the suffering of traumatized patients, including those who have experienced massive social trauma. Her sensitive and careful clinical illustrations of this work suggest that she often succeeds, or at least does no harm.
As if in dialogue with group analysts and psychoanalysts, the Child Survivors Association of Great Britain has published an anthology of the self recounted memories of some of their members of their experiences in a slightly revised and enlarged edition of their previous anthology Zachor—the Hebrew verb for remember or to remember. Actually, ‘zachor’ is the imperative form of the command to remember, as in ‘Remember the Sabbath Day, keep it holy’, the fourth of the Ten Commandments. These men and women, all more than 67 years of age, survived experiences as infants and children in death camps, concentration camps, and/or in foster families, and in other less safe and stable domestic arrangements.
In writing and publishing this anthology, these child survivors have fulfilled the command to remember, and have demonstrated the importance of doing so. They have attempted to work through their experience of trauma rather than to repeat it with their own children and other members of their new families and wider communities. They have tried to make creative use of their traumatic experience. Nonetheless, I would agree with many of the authors of the chapters in this informative, beautiful book that it is neither a moral nor developmental failure to be unable to forgive the perpetrators of the monstrous crimes against them.
I will not write about these autobiographical reports, except to acknowledge the enormous courage and determination of their authors, several of whom have been patients of mine, and members of my twice weekly groups. I (Hopper, 2003b) reported some of the sessions of one of these groups, which was formed especially for survivors of the Shoah, in Traumatic Experience in the Unconscious Life of Groups. I am pleased to acknowledge my role in this project, which is mentioned in one of the Prefaces to We Remember by Dr Alfred Garwood, one of the contributors to it. Dr Garwood is now a member of the IGA (London) and a member of the Executive Committee of the GASi. He realized the potential of group analysis for helping child survivors, and was instrumental in starting groups for them. I would also like to acknowledge that David Elliott, who was one of the principals of Elliott and Thompson, the publisher of Zachor, helped in the editing and publication of it. David is married to Barbara Gordon-Elliott, a retired member of the IGA and the GASi.
I anticipate another edition of We Remember, possibly including some material about the lives of these child survivors after they ‘immigrated’ to England. It would also be useful to have reports from their children about their attempts to free themselves from the projections of their parents, some of which were, and continue to be, more or less inevitable. Naturally, their children search for forms of denial in order to protect themselves from the pain of both remembering and ‘un-remembering’—which is somewhat different from forgetting.
The solution of Pontius Pilate has proved to be untenable. Forgiveness of massive social trauma is best realized when the memories of it are as realistic and nuanced as possible. Paradoxically, we can only look forward when we also have the strength to look back. The study of the social unconscious is one of the hallmarks of contemporary group analysis. It is also one of our legacies to the next generation of students and colleagues.