Presentation and Papers Announcement by Ruth Lijtmaer (USA)
Destruction and Survival in a Dangerous Journey
In: Ethnic Conflict and Multigenerational Trauma Through the Lens of Psychohistory, Psychoanalysis and Cinema Analysis. International Psychohistory Association (IPA), Annual Conference, online, May 20-22, 2020.
Lijtmaer used two films, El Norte (1984) and Fire at Sea (2016), to illustrate how the trauma of escaping dangerous living conditions changed and did not change in 34 years. El Norte shows the journey of two teenage siblings who manage to escape the massacre in Guatemala and start a new life in El Norte, the USA. Fire at Sea describes how the many men, women and children packed into the battered vessels that ply the waters near Lampedusa, Italy, suffer from hunger, exposure and illness. Lijtmaer also drew a connection between her presentation and the events surrounding Covid-19 and police brutality.
Silenced and Unsilenced: Why Didn’t They Talk Before?
(2020). Other/Wise. International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education, Issue 1: Spring (e-journal). ifpe.wordpress.com.
This paper tells the story of human resolve, survival, repair and creativity of psychoanalysts who escaped the Holocaust or other social trauma. Out of their personal experiences, they developed ideas and theories that influenced not only the psychoanalytic world but all of western culture before and after World War II. Many of these analysts’ inability to talk about their experiences (some took 20 years to be able to do so) shows the impact of trauma on memory and the ubiquity of dissociation in everyday life, a dissociation not necessarily pathological but one existing on a continuum from more or less volitional or conscious ways (Bromberg, 2014)
Personal Reflections on the Demands on the Analyst in these Chaotic Times
(2020). CPPNJ Newsletter. Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey, June.
myemail.constantcontact.com/June-2020-CPPNJ-Newsletter.html?soid=1103195912344&aid=n0yx-0yXn0U
We are living in an unprecedented time of global emergency. We lost what we had, a stable home we depended on and in which we felt comfortable and secure. Under these conditions, the way we work with patients adds new demands. We are spatially distant but try to be emotionally close. What we are experiencing reactivates prior traumas in the context of this current threat, opening up the past that at times was repressed. Other times we believed it was worked through. There is ego precocity invoking omnipotence/self sufficiency as response to threat. There is a mutual vulnerability between patient and analyst.
Ruth Lijtmaer, Ph.D.
88 West Ridgewood Ave.
Ridgewood, New Jersey 07450
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