A Letter from Iran to Psychoanalysis

Forty-seven years ago, a revolution took place in Iran that led to the establishment of a religious totalitarian regime, supported at the time by the majority of the population. In this way, most of my life has unfolded under this regime. I do not intend to recount my autobiography. Rather, I wish to describe, to some extent, the current condition of psychoanalysis's “children” in Iran, and perhaps in doing so, contribute in some small way to the advancement of psychoanalytic thought. As I write this letter, we are living through days in which the United States military has deployed numerous warships and aircraft around Iran, and we await bombardment at any moment. Unlike many other instances of bombing, this time a large portion of the population is hoping for it to occur, fearing instead that President Trump might abandon this course and reach an agreement with the regime that would ensure its survival.

Under this religious regime, known internationally as the rule of the Ayatollahs or the mullahs, any dissenting voice is immediately suppressed. Before the expansion of social media, the authorities were able to monopolize mass media and crush opposition outlets, thereby concealing the regime's brutal and predatory nature from the public sphere, while killing or imprisoning countless innocent people in prisons or in their own homes. Once people were able to find one another online, communicate freely, and expose extensive documentation of the regime's violence and oppression, its popular support gradually eroded and protests spread. Each time, the authorities attempted to portray these uprisings as isolated disturbances by a small group of agitators, but this strategy consistently failed due to widespread communication among citizens and the growing activity of the opposition abroad, led by the son of the former Shah. Gradually, it became clear to the majority of Iranians that the leader of the regime, who had long hidden behind the nominal republican structure of t