PSYCHOANALYSIS, COLLECTIVE TRAUMAS AND MEMORY PLACES

What many of the authors in the book seem to have in common is the attention to the traumatic nature of certain places of the memory: theatres of wars (Janigro), or lines in the diary of a father, who miraculously survived genocide (J. Altounian). In some cases, the victims of collective traumas, undergone in the home Mediterranean countries, take their dramas of migrants and refugees to analysts in the North of Europe (as in the case of Varvin and Papadopoulos). In other pieces (by Ritter and Halberstadt-Freud)the consulting rooms are places of the memory in which the analyst reflects on the subject of trans-generational transmission of collective guilt connected with Nazism and with the Shoah. In other contributions in this book, the places of the memory are those of the Middle East caught up in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From different points of view, three authors, Gampel, Deutsch and Wirth, speak to us of places of the memory where the collective traumas unfortunately are still on-going .