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The troubling, worldwide resurgence of racism makes Vamik Volkan’s: “Ghost in the Human Psyche: The Story of a ‘Muslim Armenian’,” a most timely topic. How does shameful cultural history live in an individual’s psyche and influence individual psychoanalysis? Some years ago, I posited that, “for traumatized individuals, when denial of a dreaded past is replaced by remembrance, intolerable dilemmas in identification may emerge” (Tessman, 1996, p. 329). That led me to question: “under what conditions can memories also be an ally in acknowledging and facing these dilemmas?” (Tessman, 1996, p. 329). What, in psychoanalytic process, might foster the incorporation of memories in ways which counter reenactment of trauma? Ironically, it may require oscillations between two contradictory attitudes. As James Joyce expressed it:
“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake;” (J. Joyce. Stephen Daedelus, Ulysses), while Victor Hugo is quoted as believing that “Memory is the only paradise from which you cannot be evicted”. (Tessman, 1996, p. 329).
Psychoanalysis is singularly suited for ‘awakening’ from personal and historically induced trauma, yet fraught: Shame and terror compound the forces which engender concealment through withholding, disguise, and fear of authentic desires. Reliance on such disguises makes free communication not only difficult, but also taboo. For the analyst it becomes a delicate, but continual challenge to avoid unacknowledged dyadic repetition of such taboos. This may require active signals from the analyst that neither his/herself, nor the analysand’s observations need to be concealed, while yet not intruding spuriously with self-disclosures. The analysand, in turn, may be especially sensitive to how tendrils of curiosity and of transference longings are received or discouraged. Exceptional care to nourish expressions of curiosity is called for because the abortion of curiosity silently functions as a mandate to negate ignoble realities, both