Abstract

In this article I address how one might develop states of freedom in analysis and in the analyst from the tangles of unconsciousness that exist in one’s unconscious mind, within the society that trained one, and from the unspoken depths of our European culture. How can one think about trauma in the individual without thinking of it in generational terms? In a similar way the cultural heritage that formed the backdrop to the development of psychoanalysis from within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its aftermath has its own value transmitting unconscious imprints on analytic societies. What are the interfaces between personal and historical trauma, and in particular the interface with unconscious processes? What we can grasp of the innermost life of the patient and of the world he or she lives in, and by which he or she is so profoundly affected, is also a part of a broader history and specific culture. Totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century have, of course, had a massive impact on Europe, including analytic societies, which I will argue is ongoing. How can the mind take a measure of history, when history will submit neither to the reason of the world nor to the mind that confronts it?