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What follows is an addendum to the introduction that encapsulates the central themes for two clinical papers in this section, authored by Monish Nayar-Akhtar, An American Identity: The Shifting Sands of Democracy and Aisha Abbasi, When the Analytic Field Becomes a Minefield: Analyzing in the Post-9/11 Era.
Prior to 9/11, educators in the United States had attempted to facilitate “multicultural educational efforts and internationalism as a response to rising anti-Americanism” (Rubin and Verheul 2011, 7). But on the heels of the attack, statements made by Lynne Cheney, the wife of the Vice-President at that time and former chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities in the weeks following 9/11, help us see what happens when persecutory anxieties take hold of the mind, in times of catastrophic panic. Cheney asserted that the idea that Americans needed to learn more about other cultures was “tantamount to admitting ‘that the events of September 11th were our fault, so that it was our failure to understand Islam that led to so many deaths and so much destruction’” (Rubin and Verheul 2011, 7). She implored that the history of the United States should be elevated in such a time of national crisis, such as the writings of the founding fathers or the chronicles of American soldiers during World War II (Rubin and Verheul 2011).
This kind of battening down of the hatches that occurred 20 years ago gives Monisha Nayar-Akhtar’s and Aisha Abbasi’s papers a special piquancy. Nayar-Akhtar communicates a deeply felt, first-hand account of the dislocating and jarring smack of prejudice, the split between good and bad, and its dehumanizing effects that came at her following 9/11. Her narrative grounds the reader in her experiences as an analyst from a diverse cultural and ethnic background. She takes the reader along with her in her report of an analytic treatment with