The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting

Essays on Trauma, History, and Memory

Edited by Michael O'Loughlin - Foreword by Claude Barbre - Contributions by Ricardo Ainslie; Claude Barbre; Scott Boehm; Marilyn Charles; Naama de la Fontaine; Justina K. Dillon; Minh Truong-George; Hannah Hahn; Tom Hennes; Luis Martin-Cabrera; Michael O'Loughlin; Nirit Gradwohl Pisano; Billie A. Pivnick; Mari Ruti; Reinhold Stipsits; Kate Szymanski; Graham Toomey; Norma Tracey; Ross Truscott; Clara Valverde; Angie Voela and Nigel Williams

The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting: Essays on Trauma, History, and Memory brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines that draw on multiple perspectives to address issues that arise at the intersection of trauma, history, and memory. Contributors include critical theorists, critical historians, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and a working artist. The authors use intergenerational trauma theory while also pushing and pulling at the edges of conventional understandings of how trauma is defined. This book respects the importance of the recuperation of memory and the creation of interstitial spaces where trauma might be voiced. The writers are consistent in showing a deep respect for the sociohistorical context of subjective formation and the political importance of recuperating dangerous memory—the kind of memory that some authorities go to great lengths to erase. The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting is of interest to critical historians, critical social theorists, psychotherapists, psychosocial theorists, and to those exploring the possibilities of life as the practice of freedom.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 396 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-4422-3187-0 • Hardback • December 2014 • $129.00 • (£99.00)

978-1-4422-3188-7 • eBook • December 2014 • $122.50 • (£95.00)

Series: New Imago

Subjects: Psychology / Psychotherapy / Group, Psychology / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition, Psychology / History, Psychology / Psychopathology / Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Religion / Buddhism / History, Religion / Buddhism / Sacred Writings, Psychology / Grief & Loss, Psychology / Health Psychology, History / Military / Ancient Warfare

The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting

Essays on Trauma, History, and Memory

Hardback

eBook

Summary

The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting: Essays on Trauma, History, and Memory brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines that draw on multiple perspectives to address issues that arise at the intersection of trauma, history, and memory. Contributors include critical theorists, critical historians, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and a working artist. The authors use intergenerational trauma theory while also pushing and pulling at the edges of conventional understandings of how trauma is defined. This book respects the importance of the recuperation of memory and the creation of interstitial spaces where trauma might be voiced. The writers are consistent in showing a deep respect for the sociohistorical context of subjective formation and the political importance of recuperating dangerous memory—the kind of memory that some authorities go to great lengths to erase. The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting is of interest to critical historians, critical social theorists, psychotherapists, psychosocial theorists, and to those exploring the possibilities of life as the practice of freedom.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 396 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-4422-3187-0 • Hardback • December 2014 • $129.00 • (£99.00)

978-1-4422-3188-7 • eBook • December 2014 • $122.50 • (£95.00)

Series: New Imago

Subjects: Psychology / Psychotherapy / Group, Psychology / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition, Psychology / History, Psychology / Psychopathology / Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Religion / Buddhism / History, Religion / Buddhism / Sacred Writings, Psychology / Grief & Loss, Psychology / Health Psychology, History / Military / Ancient Warfare

Author

Michael O’Loughlin, PhD,is professor in the School of Education and clinical and research supervisor in the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology at Adelphi University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword, Claude Barbre

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting: Introductory Essay

Michael O’Loughlin

Part I Ethics of Memory

Chapter 1: Is Autonomy Unethical?: Trauma and the Politics of Responsibility

Mari Ruti

Chapter 2: Troubling Naturalized Trauma, Essentialized Therapy, and the Asphyxiation of Dangerous Memory

Michael O’Loughlin

Part II Biographical Remnants

Chapter 3: Wit(h)nessing the Other’s Trauma: An Exploration of Barbara Loftus’s Painting Through the Work of Bracha Ettinger

Angie Voela

Chapter 4: In Search of Forgotten Memories after Thirty-three Years: A Journey Home

Minh Truong-George

Chapter 5: The Sense of Loss and the Search for Meaning

Norma Tracey & Graham Toomey

Chapter 6: Anglo-German Displacement and Diaspora in the Early Twentieth Century: An Intergenerational Haunting

Nigel Williams

Chapter 7: Ghosts in the Mirror: A Granddaughter of Holocaust Survivors Reflects the Faces of History

Nirit Gradwohl Pisano

Chapter 8: Questions Unasked: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma in the Life Narratives of Lithuanian Women Survivors of the 1941 Soviet Deportations.

Justina Kaminskaite Dillon & Michael O’Loughlin

Chapter 9: They Left it All Behind: Psychological Experiences of Jewish Immigration and the Ambiguity of Loss

Hannah Hahn

Part III Historical Remnants

Chapter 10: The Silence of the Grandchildren of the Civil War: Transgenerational Trauma in Spain

Clara Valverde & Luis Martín-Cabrera

Chapter 11: A South African Story of Disavowal: Towards a Genealogy of Post-apartheid Empathy

Ross Truscott

Chapter 12: Spanish Horror as Te(x)timony of Mass Extermination and the Cultural Trauma of Enforced Disappearance

Scott Boehm

Chapter 13: “Each of Us Bears His Own Hell:” A Window into Venues of Trauma in Central
Eastern Europe

Reinhold Stipsits

Chapter 14: Transmission of Jewish/Israeli Collective Memory as Evident in the Narratives of Israeli Soldiers who participated in The 2006 Second Lebanon War.

Naama De La Fontaine & Kate Szymanski

Chapter 15: Trauma, Community, and Contemporary Racial Violence: Reflections on the Architecture of Memory

Ricardo Ainslie

Chapter 16: Managing Collapse: Commemorating September 11^th through the Relational Design of a Memorial Museum

Billie Pivnick & Tom Hennes

Afterword, Marilyn Charles

Reviews

This is a collection of essays that make important historical events come alive in a direct and vivid manner through the lens of trauma. A vast reach of geographical spaces and historical moments are captured, not only from a therapeutic perspective, but also through other ways of engaging trauma, namely art therapy, critical history, and many other discursive positions. This unusual approach makes this volume so special.
— Ingo Lambrecht, Manawanui, Maori Mental Health Services, Auckland District Health Board, New Zealand

This book is both thought provoking and morally challenging. Our heritage of uninvited ghosts that haunt our personal, cultural, and socio-political histories where traumatic memories are repressed yet transmitted to subsequent generations is brought home as each chapter unfolds with vivid accounts of unbearable inhumanity and inspiring threads of human recognition. The ghosts of collective trauma, unwanted social memory and inconvenient truth are everywhere. This book is essential reading to any scholar, social theorist, psychoanalyst or psychotherapist who recognises that globally more and more individuals are being forced by birth or citizenship to have to deal with human violations committed in their name.
— Cora Smith, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

A truly excellent and impressive collection for quality and range, this book brings to light, and brings light to, many dark events in human history. Its near-global set of case studies and intergenerational dimension makes this a must read for anyone interested in understanding the historical, psychological and socio-political dimensions of trauma.

— Lita Crociani-Windland, PhD, University of the West of England