Rebuilding Homeland Security: Creating a Bridge from Psychoanalysis to the American Red Cross

“Anything that encourages the growth of emotional ties between (people) must operate against war.”

On a recent drive to Oklahoma City, as I watched buffalo grazing against a backdrop of the stunning Wichita Mountains, I suddenly recalled that terrible CNN news flash:“April 19, 1995, around 9:03 AM, just after parents dropped their children off at day care at the Murrah Federal Building, the unthinkable happened.” Timothy McVeigh had set off a massive bomb killing 168 people. I came to Oklahoma City, to the site of the bombing, as an American Red Cross Disaster Volunteer assigned to Disaster Mental Health (DMH). I was expected to meet the mental health needs of American Red Cross Disaster workers and to provide crisis counseling and intervention to victims and rescue emergency workers directly affected by the impact of the bombing.

Deeply troubled by this horrendous act, I wanted to do more to demonstrate the power of the mind in the healing and recovery process. My Disaster Recovery experience changed my life immeasurably. While already a part of the psychoanalytic community and preparing to begin analytic training, I fantasized about bringing psychoanalysis closer to this world of disaster relief and recovery. The dream was to build on these Oklahoma City experiences.

Response to 9/11

Nothing, not even the Oklahoma City bombing, prepared us for the horrors of September 11, 2001. Impassioned to do something, the Michigan Psychoanalytic Society's Crisis Response Committee (CRC) sponsored the American Red Cross Disaster Mental Health Training at our Psychoanalytic Center to prepare psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically-informed clinicians to participate more actively with other professional and governmental agencies in local and national crisis and disaster relief interventions.

A full class of 22 clinicians participated in the two-day training program, creating a strong and resonant bond. The newly certified American Red Cross Disaster Mental Health volunteers included psychoanalytic therapists, psychoanalytic training candidates, and practicing psychoanalysts.

Inviting the American Red Cross Disaster Mental Health Training into the world of psychoanalysis and its community was a groundbreaking step for us that would not have taken place were it not for the events of September 11. The therapeutic philosophy and goals of the American Red Cross DMH worker and those of the psychoanalytic community have generally been perceived as quite different from each other, perhaps even antithetical. Although psychoanalytic and psychodynamic clinicians may focus daily on the impact of crises and trauma in the lives of the people with whom they work, the focus has typically been on long-term relief, recovery, and reconstruction. On the other hand, in the world of the American Red Cross Disaster Mental Health clinician/volunteer, the primary goals of training have focused on the role of the American Red Cross with the community and the relief of immediate stresses, emotional pain, and suffering.

One might conclude that individuals who come to the table with disparate, even distrusting, points of view about how to work effectively with people in crisis and in trauma would assuredly find it difficult to work together for a common purpose. However, this is not the case when a powerful and common purpose captures us. I recall a specific instance that highlights the synergy and change that can come from infusing psychoanalytic ideas into reality-based crisis counseling, an emergency relief and recovery intervention of the American Red Cross DMH training process.

A Disguised Cry for Help

Following the Southern California earthquake of 1994, I and my DMH training partner—a psychiatric nurse with a training orientation of supportive and cognitive behavioral therapy—were assigned to Los Angeles to train local psychologists and social workers in DMH. The class was unusually large and some clinicians almost immediately became critical of nearly everything about the course. One therapist in particular served as the voice for the rest when she said, “The course looks superficial and inadequate for me.”

My training partner, committed to following the prescribed mandates of our ARC assignment, wanted to simply ignore the complaints and proceed with our two-day training. I suspected that some of the criticism toward the trainers was an expression of transference issues that I thought we might profitably explore.

My assessment paid off because it very quickly became clear that the most vocal

woman had been a victim of the earthquake—she had just lost much of her home, precious memories, and possessions. She felt frightened, insecure and as though she had been unjustly unprepared and unprotected from such a disaster. She was looking for someone to soothe her and pay emotionally for her losses. As she opened the wellsprings of earnest dialogue, several others chimed in to disclose their own painful brushes with loss. Once the group began to air their experiences and feelings with us and with each other, they were able to get the help they needed and turned to their training with renewed hope and commitment. Psychoanalytic understanding made it possible for us to give these clinicians what they came for.

Until recently, with the increased incidents of terrorism and violence within our community, practicing clinicians from psychodynamic or psychoanalytic backgrounds were rarely found among American Red Cross volunteers. I can say that the psychoanalytically-oriented DMH worker—who feeds disaster victims from a Mass Care Vehicle, who reads and talks to distressed children on the floor of a dingy Red Cross shelter, or who soothes a desperately tired and irate Red Cross volunteer who has been told by the people he tries to support that what he provides is worthless—learns to feel a different kind of engagement, flexibility, and confidence, carrying the working analytic frame (including his/her couch) inside an open, compassionate, and empathic mind.