André Karger, Düsseldorf The social dimension of trauma Report on the workshop "Trauma and Group", November 15, 2003, Düsseldorf
-
Psychoanalysts, philosophers, and social scientists came together on 15.11.2003 for the first interdisciplinary workshop "Trauma and Group" at the Clinic for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf. They took up the precursory social dimension of individual trauma with reference to trauma in the group, and at the same time dealt with the current discussion around the question of the causes and consequences of societal violence.
The model for responses to extreme violence, inclusive of long-term effects, has been understood through the relevant concept of "collective trauma", which has been successful for a few years in cultural studies. In fact, the presumption that collectivities and cultures have specific types of reactions to experiences of extreme violence that are similar to the ways in which we understand individual trauma is by all means intuitively plausible, however absent adequate conceptualizations for it have been up until now.
The questions of collective trauma and of cultural violence are inextricably bound up with the psychology of the large (mass) group and with a certain type of unconscious representation (ideology; myth; religion; unconscious fantasy; selected trauma; etc.) that constitutes that large group. We should make inquiries into the meaning of trauma for the constitution of groups and their processes.
André Karger (Düsseldorf), in his lecture "Gibt es kollektive Traumata? Kritische Anmerkungen zu einem modischen Begriff "(Are there collective traumas? Critical remarks on a fashionable concept), attended to the conceptual problematization of collective trauma and of the group. Some have criticized that, in many cases, it is one-sided to focus on the real factual experience of violence, and the indirect identification with it, as a constitutive criterion. In contrast, trauma in the categorical sense of an antecedent of some particular mortality rate has so far been too little observed. Rudolf Heinz’s updated theory of the death drive directly presents extended paths toward a better theory of collective or cultural trauma. The advancement of culture is motivated by a chimerical cover-up of an original trauma, whose very chimerical masking directly provokes new violence. In his article "Das Trauma aller Traumen: Über den Tod und die Vergeblichkeit seiner Abschaffung im Todestrieb" (The Trauma of all Traumas. On Death and the Futility of its Negation in the Death Drive), the philosopher Rudolf Heinz (Düsseldorf) synoptically introduced this update of the death drive that he has been working on for a decade, which operates under the concept "Pathognostik" and which he has placed within the context of trauma. In doing so he conceptualized the death drive itself as an instance of defense that defers the regression into death. This defense is itself the ur-trauma of the mortality of death. The problem of the representation of trauma was impressively taken up by cultural theorist Reinhold Görling (Hannover/Düsseldorf) in his article "Zeugen für das, was einen ansieht – Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Trauma, Bild und Zeugenschaft ausgehend von Polanskis 'Der Pianist'" (Witnesses for what is looking at you – Thoughts on the Relationship of Trauma, Image, and Witnessing based on Polanski’s 'The Pianist'). He emphasized the violent event of defiguration as the deprivation of the self-representation of the victim, which is itself a pictorial event and underscores the necessity of witnessing.
The psychoanalyst Bernd Klose (Düsseldorf) dealt with the concept of "selective trauma" (Vamik Volkan). In his contribution "Transgenerationelle Traumaweitergabe: ein Erhaltungsmoment problematischer Grossgruppenidentität" (Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma: a moment of conservation of problematic large-group identity), he referred to the range of this concept for the understanding of large-group processes. The peace researcher Hajo Schmidt (Hagen) established the relations between, on the one hand, psychoanalytic theories of the death drive and trauma and, on the other hand, approaches from social science and peace studies. Simultaneously, Dieter S. Lutz’s entropic theory of the human capacity for peace was also an important source of his considerations. Finally, the social scientist Hans-Jürgen Wirth (Giessen) moved on genuine psychoanalytic terrain: he pursued the "Verzahnung von individuellem und kollektivem Trauma" (Interlocking of Individual and Collective Trauma) by means of a psychoanalytic interpretation of the patho-biography of Slobodan Milosovic.
The contributions of the workshop will be published in the fall of this year by the publisher "Psychosozial" under the title of the workshop, "Trauma und Gruppe" (Trauma and Group). A sequel of the event is planned under the title "Trauma und Schmerz" (Trauma and Pain) this year on Saturday, 20.11.2004. The provisional program will appear shortly. Interested active participants are gladly welcome. For more information on this event please contact André Karger.
Translation from German: Ross Lerner
«
|
Short biographical note André Karger was born 1966 in Germany. He is working as a medical doctor and psychotherapist at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University of Düsseldorf. He is the secretary of "Psychoanalyse und Philosophie e.V." (www.psychoanalyseundphilosophie.de), which has organized in April 2002 an international conference on "sexual abuse in psychoanalysis". A special interest is the interdisciplinary research on cultural trauma. Latest publication: Karger, A.; Knellessen, O.; Lettau, G.; Weismüller, C. (Hg.) (2001). Sexuelle Übergriffe in Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Dr. André Karger
Klinik für psychosomatische Medizin und Psychotherapie der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf / Rheinische Kliniken Düsseldorf
Bergische Landstraße 2
40625 Düsseldorf
Phone +49 (211) 922-4732
Email karger@uni-duesseldorf.de
URL http://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/MedFak/psysoma/Welcome.htm
|
Citation André Karger, The social dimension of trauma. Report on the workshop "Trauma and Group", Nov. 15, 2003, Düsseldorf. In: TRN-Newsletter 2, Hamburg Institute for Social Research, June 2004.
URL http://www.TraumaResearch.net/net2/confrep2/karger.htm
Copyright © 2004, André Karger and TRN-Newsletter, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the TRN-Newsletter. For other permission questions, please contact via email the editor Cornelia.Berens@his-online.de
|
|
|