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In Uprooted Minds , Nancy Caro Hollander has created a powerful, moving, and scholarly work of social psychoanalytic exploration that delves into some of the darkest areas of human experience. In doing so, she convincingly proves that it is not only the place of psychoanalysis but indeed its obligation to not only examine the field of repression but also that of oppression. One-third psychohistorical recounting, one-third political testament, and one-third theoretical analysis, her areas of exploration include extreme poverty, kidnapping, torture, the missing, executions, exile, and more. What is most astounding is that throughout the book she does not intellectualize, even when she theorizes, always aware that these are some of the most painful experiences humanity endures. She never forgets that they create inchoate emotions, some repressed, others disavowed and denied, but always waiting to be named and integrated, particularly in the way that only psychoanalysis can. The naming and working through of these psychological manifestations carry both political and subjective weight. It is political in the sense that it speaks of that which was socially and politically forbidden, and subjective in the sense that it allows for the integration of emotional experiences that were, initially, too painful to be acknowledged, much less put into words.
Any book review requires some level of abridgment, but there is no way of summarizing this text without doing it the injustice of allowing it to lose a portion of its soul, its humanity and empathy. In the service of transparency, then, it must be stated that this review cannot capture the true emotional atmosphere of the author’s voyage.
The first six chapters are written as a psycho-biographical treatise on oppression, torture, exile, and the psychological processes and mechanisms resulting from exposure—both direct and indirect—to these types of traumatic events. Interviews with the survivors are mostly from South America, and