Trauma and Sympathy in Buck

Horses and people have long had a special relationship. From the caves of Chauvet and Lascaux to the Great Plains of North America, from cart horse to polo pony, from Equus (, Shaffer) to Warhorse (, Morpurgo/Stafford), for at least 30,000 years horses have been admired, tamed, worked, and loved by human beings. Still-popular names like Philip and Philippa (‘friend of horses’) remind us of how important horses have been for the flourishing of humans. Other beautiful names from Hellenic culture - Hippocrates (‘strong horse,’ the father of western medicine), Xanthippe (‘yellow horse’, the wife of Socrates), Melanippe (‘black horse’), Hipparchus (‘horse tamer’ or ‘horse master’) - have passed out of common usage. In both North and South America the expansion of farming and commerce proceeded to the rhythm of horses' hooves. The cultures of gaucho and cowboy are still important to many, although they are becoming transformed into memory, story, and myth. Among all the animals that humans have harnessed if any have earned the epithet ‘noble’ it is the horse, for its intelligence, sensitivity, grace, and sheer usefulness. People love horses. People also love stories of heroic overcoming. What better than a true story that combines both? A story of an American cowboy and horse tamer whose life was saved by horses, and whose vocation became to save and enrich the lives of thousands of horses and riders.

This review explores two parallel interpretations or stories within the award-winning documentary film Buck (, Meehl). The subject of the film, Buck Brannaman, is an internationally renowned horseman who suffered several childhood and adult traumas and who is generally seen as having overcome them, largely through his humane work with horses and their riders. I will try in this review to describe how with sympathetic and admirable traumatized subjects a particular form of countertransference reaction may arise and affect family, therapists, filmmakers, biographers, journalist