Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 10:50:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: Durrant Samuel R <4srd1-AT-qlink.queensu.ca>
Subject: Re:  Re: Need Information on African Americans and Psychoanalysis


Citation: American Imago 55:1 Spring 98.  The most interesting thing about
the issue is the crisis that psychoanalysis is thrown into when
confronting trauma on the scale that the TRC is confronted with (the
International Guardian ran an article highlighting the similar problem in 
Rwanda: "the whole country will become a psychiatric ward if people
aren't helped"--but how, what form should therapy take?): the writers'
(most of them South Africans with some connection to psycho)
response is often to call for more analysts etc, with the occasional ref
to the role of "traditional healers": but they raise more Qs than they can
answer:

(how) can psychoanalysis have a reference beyond the bourgoise individual
subject (who can afford to pay or belongs to a system that can pay)? Does
psychoanalysis have an extra-clinical role to play? Can it help a culture
(as opposed to individuals)  come to terms with its past? How does it deal
with non-Western subjects?  Does psychoanalysis assume a universal
subject?? Is this a bad thing (if it does)? Two or three of the authors
look at the vexed relationship between psychoanalysis and postcolonialism,
which hinges on the question of universalism. 


Sam.

On Thu, 23 Apr 1998, Zona Sur wrote:

> 
> In a message dated 4/23/98 12:43:36 PM, you wrote:
> 
> <<BTW: a very interesting issue of American Imago has just come out on South
> Africa, psychoanalysis and the Truth and Reconciliation Committee.
> >>
> 
> Whoa!  Citation please!
> Thanks, 
> 
> ZS
> 
> 
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> 



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