Abstract
Drawing from psychoanalytic notions of the relation between trauma and memory, as well as the importance of “giving voice” and representation as essential elements of a healing process for both individual and collective traumatic experience, this article describes three interrelated, psychoanalytically informed interventions in a Texas community where conflict-laden residues of the Jim Crow era continued to affect race relations. The first intervention (the creation of a space within which Jim Crow– and Civil Rights–era narratives could be spoken and explored) and the second intervention (the creation of a documentary film) were closely linked because they were part of a process in which interviews gave testimony about a decisive, transformational experience. The third intervention created a public event where that which had been denied and excommunicated from the dominant narrative of the community's educational history could be “spoken.”
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Notes
Following the American Psychological Association guidelines for avoiding racial/ethnic bias in language, I have adopted the convention of capitalizing “Black” and “White” to designate individuals of African-American and European-American ancestry, respectively.
I am indebted to Elizabeth Goren and Judith Alpert for helping me understand my work through this lens.
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Ainslie, R. Intervention strategies for addressing collective trauma: Healing communities ravaged by racial strife. Psychoanal Cult Soc 18, 140–152 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/pcs.2013.3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/pcs.2013.3