Communities that have experienced public traumas often must contend with well-intentioned but unhelpful responses from outsiders. How they manage this task conveys a great deal about their particular histories and their current struggles. Three-person psychoanalysis and contemporary psychoanalytic ethnography both acknowledge that misrecognition necessarily inheres in even the most diligent empathic efforts. Work that draws on the contributions of these theories may help communities understand and survive the effects of empathic failure in the wake of trauma. A research trip to Jasper, Texas, site of the racially motivated murder of James Byrd, Jr, is described to illustrate these ideas.