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‘History affects us whether we want it or not.’ Setting the tone for the following hour that treats his life, work and analytic theory, the voice of the Turkish-Cypriot-born psychoanalyst and five-times Nobel Peace Prize nominee Vamık Volkan introduces the viewer to Molly Castelloe's award-winning documentary film Vamik's Room. Now based in the United States and renowned for his innovative interdisciplinary approach to social conflicts around the globe, Volkan pioneered both theoretical and practical work in conflict resolution that applies psychoanalytic concepts such as projection, the unconscious and trauma to international relations. Taking his childhood in ethnically divided Cyprus, the lessons of which ‘informed his revolutionary ideas’ (02:34), as a starting point for Volkan's story, the film narrates the 87-year-old Volkan's academic and personal journey that was inspired by the German-American ego-psychoanalyst Erik Erikson's fundamental question ‘Why do humans kill?’
By means of interviews with both Volkan and his colleague M. Gerald Fromm and illustrated by photographs from conflict regions such as post-Soviet Eastern Europe and war-torn Middle Eastern areas, Vamik's Room explains Volkan's theory by tracing its most important ideas, such as ‘large-group identity’. Identified by Volkan as ‘the key concept in international relations’ (08:25), large-group identity is understood as ‘the subjective experience of thousands or millions of people who are linked by a persistent sense of sameness’ (Volkan, 1999a, p. 32). Integral to large-group identities are collective mourning processes, which help the group to overcome traumata resulting from past social and political conflicts, such as profound humiliation or mass murder. While mourning has the potential to ‘heal’