The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting: Essays on Trauma, History, and Memory brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines that draw on multiple perspectives to address issues that arise at the intersection of trauma, history, and memory. Contributors include critical theorists, critical historians, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and a working artist. The authors use intergenerational trauma theory while also pushing and pulling at the edges of conventional understandings of how trauma is defined. This book respects the importance of the recuperation of memory and the creation of interstitial spaces where trauma might be voiced. The writers are consistent in showing a deep respect for the sociohistorical context of subjective formation and the political importance of recuperating dangerous memory-the kind of memory that some authorities go to great lengths to erase. The Ethics of Remembering and the Consequences of Forgetting is of interest to critical historians, critical social theorists, psychotherapists, psychosocial theorists, and to those exploring the possibilities of life as the practice of freedom.

Fragments of Trauma and the Social Production of Suffering: Trauma, History, and Memory offers a kaleidoscope of perspectives that highlight the problem of traumatic memory. Because trauma fragments memory, storytelling is impeded by what is unknowable and what is unspeakable. Each of the contributors tackles the problem of narrativizing memory that is constructed from fragments that have been passed along the generations. When trauma is cultural as well as personal, it becomes even more invisible, as each generation's attempts at coping push the pain further below the surface. Consequently, that pain becomes increasingly ineffable, haunting succeeding generations. In each story the contributors offer, there emerges the theme of difference, a difference that turns back on itself and makes an accusation. Themes of knowing and unknowing show the terrible toll that trauma takes when there is no one with whom the trauma can be acknowledged and worked through. In the face of utter lack of recognition, what might be known together becomes hidden. Our failure to speak to these unaspirated truths becomes a betrayal of self and also of others. In the case of intergenerational and cultural trauma, we betray not only our ancestors but also the future generations to come. In the face of unacknowledged trauma, this book reveals that we are confronted with the perennial choice of speaking or becoming complicit in our silence.

Views dissenting from the status quo in psychoanalysis are presented in four areas: Psychoanalysis and Early Dissidents, The Psychoanalytic Process, Psychoanalysis and Culture, and Psychoanalysis and Religion. Authors introduce ideas on the analyst's freedom and imagination, the use of humor and play, and the importance of small talk, as well as new perspectives on understanding and working with trauma. The section on psychoanalysis and culture addresses an area rarely considered in psychoanalysis today, regardless of theoretical model. As the global culture becomes more salient, clinicians can ignore the issues of culture with a diversity of patients only to their detriment. The volume's final attention to psychoanalysis and religion frames a new paradigm for understanding mysticism and the relationship to psychopathology to spiritual disciplines and experiences.

These significant papers, written over a period of more than forty years, document the evolution of Dr. Esther Menaker's thinking from a Freudian position - reflective of her early training with Anna Freud in Vienna - to a self psychological approach both in theory and in practice. In developing treatment objectives, Dr. Menaker traces the historical and social factors that lead to different psychological problems, and emphasizes growth and the optimal fulfillment of an individual's potentiality, rather than the elimination of symptoms as constituting "cure". Her shift from classical instinct theory as the primary explanation of human behavior to what Kohut termed the empathic stance as a legitimate method of observation is clearly illustrated with clinical material. Organized in sections that reflect Dr. Menaker's major areas of interest, and written from the vantage point of more than sixty years of experience as a psychoanalyst and gifted teacher, this volume focuses on self psychology, masochism, women's issues, and the history of psychoanalysis. The book concludes with an interview with Dr. Menaker that captures the author's candid style in regard to her work and life.

The integration of religion into psychotherapy finds expression in the therapist's stance and response to those who seek help. The editors have gathered papers that demonstrate through extensive autobiographical material the relationship between personal religious experience and clinical work. The contributing authors, without exception, confront psychoanalytic theory and religious teachings in highly personal ways.