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The two papers that follow this essay use different modes of psychoanalytic investigation to consider the impact of significant national traumas on their countries’ citizenry. I use these papers as an invitation to comment further on the different kinds of silence wrought by the terror described in these papers, on the difficulties inherent in mourning traumatic events, and on the ways in which national myths can defend against the pain of traumatic loss (loss of pride and of identity) and against guilt and shame about the perpetration of trauma. I examine, as does Vamik Volkan (1997), how such myths, especially about national or regional identity, may perpetuate violence. I offer examples too of the discourse derived from myths that deny loss or guilt, and discuss the the intergenerational impact of the denying trauma and perpetration. Finally, I consider these themes in an example from recent United States history.
“The inability to mourn and nationalism in Japan after 1945” traces the history of dual traumas: first, the perpetration of well-known atrocities by the Japanese state during the Second World War; and, second, the mass victimization of the Japanese people through nuclear assaults on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The authors describe an eerie cultural silence extant in the nation since 1945 on matters of socio-political and historical significance, and its replacement by a modern Japanese identity rooted largely in its economic system. They contend that this vast silence, along with the displacement of the national identity towards a manic striving for economic success, was caused by three factors: a cultural inability to mourn Japan’s defeat in that war, the devastation of nuclear assault on two of its major cities, and the failure to confront and mourn the atrocities its state committed during that time. They also attribute it to a void created within Japanese society after the post-war occupying Allied For