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It is often refreshing for English-speaking readers, if intimidating, to read papers on a familiar subject seen from a European perspective: there is a poetic quality to some of the writing that can bring to life a concept that has become tired and over-familiar. Here is an example from the Introduction (p. xx): ‘An inheritance of suffering, a sediment, a deposit of death that impairs their mental soundness, blurs their feelings and colonizes their internal world; a disturbing polysemy …’, even if this last word has us turning to the dictionary.
This excellent book is based on the work of the ongoing workshop of the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and the contributors all work with victims of state violence and torture in different parts of the world: Denmark, UK, South America, Israel, France, South Africa and Italy. They make reference to authors previously unknown to me, and it is therefore all the more frustrating that many quotations are followed by ‘(date needed)’, as the volume could benefit from further proof-reading.
The ordinariness of the title, Bearing Witness, in relation to the literature of trauma hides a challenge to traditional psychoanalytic thinking, though this is not a new one, with the claim that working with trauma is now at the cutting edge of psychoanalytic practice. There is the occasional homage to Freud, as in the final chapter by Dr Gautier, in which he recounts Freud's encounter with the hotel waitress, Katharina, when walking in the mountains on vacation, as the prototype of non-interpretative ‘bearing witness’; but the theme running through the book is that psychoanalytic neutrality is no longer appropriate in situations where state violence is involved: ‘In this situation, the psychoanalyst becomes a possible fellow-combatant in the struggle against barbarism’ (p. 158). The notion of a ‘testimonial pact’ between listener and speaker is explored: ‘If one considers psychoanalysis as an opportunity to take in and tra