Introduction

Donna Orange

Four colleagues from the IAPSP community attempted, in Panel II of the Vienna Conference, to place some contemporary crises or emergencies in the context of Heinz Kohut’s writings on courage and leadership. Mindful of the many ways that our current situations repeat, or threaten to repeat, the horror of 1938 that drove Freud, Kohut, and nearly 160,000 Jews out of Vienna, to exile, imprisonment, and death, we looked at Israel/Palestine (Eldad Iddan, assisted by Jane Lewis), South Africa (Amanda Kottler), climate emergency (Donna Orange), and the impact of crisis on clinical work (Chris Jaenicke).

Reading Kohut’s early papers in the context of today’s multifaceted crisis reality.

Eldad Iddan presented a conceptualization of today’s multi-faceted crisis-laden reality. Although wishing to avoid simplistic comparisons, he pointed out how the current upsurge of nationalism, xenophobia, religious fundamentalism, racism, segregation, corruption, and imminent threats to democracy which surface almost everywhere, as well as the global refugee problem, make it difficult to ignore the echoes of crises that occurred some 80-90 years ago. Writings by Freud, Fromm, Adorno were mentioned as relevant. Kohut’s contributions on leadership, charisma, and courage seemed helpful for analyzing the success of present-day narcissistic leaders. They incite demonization and segregation of others as way of nurturing an illusory sense of supremacy and cohesion, which serve the ends of the leader rather than those of their peoples. Sociologist Hochschild’s research was also presented as helping decipher why weakened populations support such leaders against their own best interests. The surprised reactions of liberals and intellectuals to these globally spreading tendencies were shown to be the outcome of their lack of acknowledgement of their own back yard oppressed and weakened. This part of the panel was concluded with the issue of responsibility, one which Kohut has not addressed. Liberals and intellectuals who are supposed to lead human society seem to have shirked this responsibility, leaving the stage open for reactionary, anti-democratic forces.

Aspects of the Global Crisis

Amanda Kottler‘s presentation of the crises in South Africa included both the personal and the political. On a political level, she focused on the 10 years of the Zuma administration, which ended in February 2018, and its implications for South Africans. She spoke first about Zuma’s outrageous, excessive and unethical use of tax payer’s funds for his private residence. Second, she described the way in which Zuma’s reckless, fraudulent, shameless, greedy and corrupt facilitation of the Gupta family’s infiltration, capture and rape of the resources of the State has disrupted South Africa’s economic sustainability and further impoverished the very people Zuma claimed to be there for. She described the consequences: White wealth and abject Black poverty remain the norm. Electricity and water supplies are at risk. There is gross unemployment and ever-increasing levels of crime. There is a steady degradation of infrastructure and service delivery. Almost daily, protests by poverty stricken, homeless communities disrupt traffic and safety on the roads. In the Western Cape, the province that Amanda lives in, during the period 2016/2017 there were 3729 murders. Violence against women is endemic and part of the horrifically patriarchal culture of the country. The personal safety of teachers is at risk. The state of the schools, the lack of educational resources, teachers and leadership is seriously hampering the accessibility and quality of learning. On the personal level, Amanda drew attention to thealmost paralyzing effect of speaking as a privileged White South African. She contrasted the poverty and hardship she witnessed daily with the comfort of her own privileged life, and ended her contribution to this first part of the panel by asking whether or not she has sufficiently acknowledged and addressed her White privilege, and what more can or should be done by those of us who want to be part of a society that is defined by compassion and generosity.

Following Amanda Kottler’s presentation of the crisis in South Africa, Eldad Iddan presented the Israel-Palestine century old conflict. He described how the over fifty-years-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories has affected both parties. To maintain the occupation against growing Palestinian resistance and at times violently aggressive revolt, Israel resorted to increasingly harsher oppressive means. This has radically affected and transformed Israeli society, gradually corrupted its moral fabric, and facilitated the rise of right-wing nationalistic governments with religious tendencies. These governments consistently demonize the Palestinians, and by building more and more Jewish settlements in the territories, undermine any prospect of reaching a two-state solution. They also use militant rhetoric to fend-off any opposition, attempt to intervene in the media, and present any criticism, journalistic, artistic or academic, as self-hating, conspiring, even as treason. They offer a discourse of steadily increasing extreme nationalism, celebrating power, sanctifying earth and blood, promoting religious fundamentalism, xenophobia, racism. Corruption, social injustice, become norms. They take legislative steps, which constitute tangible threats to freedom of speech, ethnic and gender equality, democracy. It seems as though they have forgotten that a situation, not unlike Israel’s current one, has brought about one of the worst disasters in human history, to which Jews themselves have fallen victims.

Chris Jaenicke bridged the two halves of the panel by speaking of trauma, crisis, and suffering in clinical work. The question posed to the Plenary II was how to link the contemporary world of upheavals and crises to our task of being self-psychologically informed psychoanalysts. Specifically, what is required of us in terms of courage and creativity. Following Kohut’s vision of the fragility of our sense of self and its basic dependence on the empathic surround, threats to our experiential worlds and our sense of cohesion must be expanded to include the context of the entire planet. His contribution was to serve as a bridge between the depictions of crises and the courage and creativity that this demands of us as clinicians. The link between the inner and outer worlds was provided by our understanding of trauma. The challenge to both participants of the therapeutic dyad demands courage and creativity. A clinical vignette was offered to illustrate that beyond interpretation working with trauma necessitates the naming of traumatic states. Creativity is required in terms timing and articulation. Courage is necessary for both therapist and patient to emotionally experience and grasp the extent and irrevocability of traumatized states. Trauma is not healed, it can, however be transformed into a tolerable experience of pain and integrated as part of a patient’s selfhood. Suffering and compassion are seen as an integral and defining characteristic of being human, as well as providing a connective relational home, individually and globally.

Instances of Courage and Creativity vis-à-vis Crises

In the second part of the panel, Amanda Kottler picked up on this question by referring to the incredibly courageous work of Advocate Thuli Madonsela, who quietly, but unrelentingly, fought, first against apartheid, then as Public Protector, against corruption, helping to bring down the Zuma government. Amanda talked about Madonsela’s recently established foundation which attempts to facilitate dialogue regarding how to make South Africa’s democracy work – with everyone having a voice. Amanda ended this section, drawing attention to the risk of this kind of dialogue failing in the face of pseudo identification, but hoping that generative dialogue of this nature might be possible in the kind of space Madonsela could create by lending her extraordinary authority and credibility; a space where everyone is encouraged to speak their minds, make sense together, and co-create solutions to the problems that bedevil South Africa.

Donna Orange came next to talk about climate emergency. Despite a tendency to avoid the warnings, times of crisis summon clinicians to emerge from comfortable consulting rooms. Daily engaged with human suffering, they now face the inextricably bound together crises of global warming and massive social injustices. Considering historical and emotional causes of climate unconsciousness and of compulsive consumerism, she argued that only a radical ethics of responsibility to be “my other’s keeper” will truly wake us up to climate change and bring psychoanalysts to actively take on responsibilities. Linking climate justice to radical ethics by way of psychoanalysis, Donna considered relevant aspects of psychoanalytic expertise, referring to work on trauma, mourning, and the transformation of trouble into purpose. She then listed initiatives, in which individuals can participate, mostly inspired by the UK-based Climate Psychology Alliance.

Jane Lewis came after, complementing Eldad’s presentation as an instance of courage and creativity by speaking of her work with young soccer/football players in the West Bank. She also described the worsening of the violence in that region and with this population.

The audience departed sobered but inspired.