It’s been an interesting period in the Collective listserv with periods of activity often interspersed with silence/s. As moderators we have found that our efforts to inject life, by sharing our personal responses/associations or analytic reflections on the impact of contemporary events, have seen mixed response. Perhaps it is a symptom of the times where many feel that their voices have limited impact on the course of events that their societies take.

In this era of Trumpism we as moderators have paradoxically at times been thought by some, back-channel, to be too open, allowing contentious rhetoric which slips into arguments. Even though it is not a Large Group, the space has functioned as one to some degree: we see posts and their authors subject to familiar Large Group dynamics, becoming symbolically representatives of the ‘left’ or the ‘right’; the fascist state; the protester/s who rail against the state but are seen as failing to effect change.

Hate, anger, hopelessness have emerged in the field of the Collective – also a wish to leave, and leaving, a ‘checking out’ as the space has sometimes felt dominated by specific narratives. Some posts have generated outrage via the inclusion of imagery too difficult to metabolize. Paradoxically, those images, representing a visceral sense of crushing subjugation, represent a theme that we turn to often in the Collective: Whose suffering can be named and witnessed without its being politicized? Is it okay to say, for instance, that this Israeli administration has lost any sense of ethical (third) responsibility without being attacked for being anti-Semitic? When one hears reports of US-backed private contractors, now responsible for aid distribution in Gaza, referring to Palestinians as the ‘zombie parade’? Or the new Trumpian US in which many ‘democratic givens’ are unilaterally being obliterated?

Will this Collective survive? We don’t know. Time will tell. We are of the mind, though, that in a parallel process perhaps there is currently little hope or light breaking (or getting) through the cracks into the Collective space.

It may be that the darkness in the world feels overpowering.

And yet it is in these times we need others most. We hope that the Conference with its space to meet and engage will have revived flagging energies/hearts.

We close off this report with the title of an unposted post, The Knocking on the Door. We see the Collective as a space where the door remains open, for those who wish to enter with their minds and words, who attempt to symbolize unthought thoughts, in the hope that they might reach others grappling with their own feelings.

We know there is no profound psychoanalytic cure for the state of the world.

Will we ever find one? Maybe for now it’s enough if we can but hold an ‘inter-being.’ Seeing together real flowers of this painful world (Basho).

Mitchel Becker and Rajan Gupta
IARPP Collective Listserv Co-Chairs and Co-Moderators

Rajan Gupta (New Zealand) and Mitchel Becker (Israel), Collective Co-Chairs

Mitchel Becker, Ph.D.
Raanana, Israel
Email Mitchel Becker

Rajan Gupta, MA, M.HSc.
Aukland, New Zealand
Email Rajan Gupta