Editor's Introduction to Ira Brenner's Review of “Vamik's Room”

A paucity of analysts have applied psychoanalytic theory to initiate interventions in a variety of communities to prevent violence and trauma and to lessen the intergenerational transmission of trauma. The role of the community psychoanalyst, a term first voiced by Twemlow, involves an active-interventional, group-focused approach using many cogent psychoanalytic principles including transference, countertransference, displacement, identity, externalization, denial, and projection. As a team member, one initiates problem solving dialogues between community stakeholders and develops ways of reframing conflicts to offer solutions. In Analysts in the Trenches: Street, Schools, War Zones, edited by Sklarew, Twemlow, and Wilkinson (The Analytic Press, ), Twemlow describes principles in elaborating the active-interventional/group-focused approach:

1. To establish a point of similarity between participants that allows for tolerance and differences in others and acceptance of negative emotions without reacting angrily or impulsively.

2. To develop the habit of collaboration by initially addressing non-conflictual issues to help establish common ground and agreement.

3. To develop personal relationships and perceptions of each other so that the people and the process become humanized.

4. To establish mutual respect for differences that have the potential to trigger racial, religious, gender, or ethnic stereotypes.

5. To develop an agreed-upon common language to communicate ideas.

6. To understand that the process is not a magic bullet and requires continued maintenance.

7. To understand that only a collaborative, non-blaming rather than competitive partnership will result in change.

8. To achieve an understanding by all participants that the facilitator(s) must remain neutral in the psychoanalytic sense; that is, that they must not adopt sides or advocate a particular position but instead should encourage mutual problem solving.