What contributions can psychoanalysis make to the understanding of terrorism, violence, ethnic cleansing, and international conflict? These were among the topics addressed by political leaders and psychoanalysts at a remarkable conference, “At the End of the Battle,” held in Lima, Peru, this past November.
Sponsored by the Peruvian Psychoanalytic Society, the IPA, and the World Bank, this is the second such conference. The conferences are the brainchild of Moises Lemlij of Lima, the current IPA treasurer. The first conference, “At the Threshold of the Millennium,” was held in Lima in April 1998. The idea was to create a forum where politicians, political strategists, and psychoanalysts could exchange views in formal discussions and mingle socially in a city with stunningly diverse cultural aspects.
Representatives from the UN, the World Bank, ambassadors, mayors, and negotiators involved in mediating the Northern Ireland and Serbian conflicts made presentations, along with psychoanalysts. To give a small sample of the rich and broad program, there were panels on “The Growing Threat of Terror,” “Corruption and Human Rights,” “Justice and Psychoanalysis: Alternative Means of Conflict Resolution,” “Victims and Victimization,” “Trauma, Memory, and Oblivion: The Holocaust,” “Therapeutic Work in Light of Human Rights,” and “The Battle of the Sexes.”
One of the most impressive aspects of the conference was the audience. It was large, and composed primarily of young men and women, many students of nearby universities and graduate schools. We can not only envy and admire, but also take a lesson from the response of the young and educated to a psychoanalytic program that was vibrant, timely, and relevant to the realities of modern life.
There was no sense here of an apologia for psychoanalysis as an arcane or outdated science. Instead there was frank presentation and appreciation of what psychoanalysis can contribute in addressing the major conflicts and challenges of our time.
We would do well to consider offering such a conference in our country — a well-publicized gathering of some of the political leaders we've been working with, around some of the critical topics we face: terrorism, the rise of religious fundamentalism, ethnic and racial intolerance, the challenge of bioethics, and the corruption of our health care system, to name a few. It should not be a major problem to attract the participation of political leaders and funding by such organizations as the World Bank.
If such a conference can be smashingly successful in Peru, presenting psychoanalysis in a powerful and cogent way, should we not be able to do at least as well? We owe a great debt of gratitude to our Peruvian colleagues for showing us what psychoanalysts working with energy and creativity can accomplish.
Bob Pyles, M.D., is the immediate past president of the APsaA, a founder of the Coalition for Patient Rights, and current chair of the Committee on Government Relations and Insurance. This is his regular column for TAP on politics and public policy.