From the Unconscious: Abbottabad

On May 2, 2011, 79 American commandos in four helicopters launched an exquisitely planned attack on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama Bin Laden, the most wanted terrorist in the world.

“Abbottabad. What was that? Where was that? It was, and is, a very nice, medium-sized city of some affluence, grace, and culture in the north of the country. It is, figuratively speaking, a stone's throw from the capital…Its nickname is ‘the city of schools,‘ and it can be thought of as a Pakistani equivalent of Cambridge (either Massachusetts or England). Its population is among the nation's youngest and smartest. It is also where the esteemed Pakistan Military Academy is located. The academy has three training battalions in constant residence,” as described in LIFE's Brought to Justice: Osama Bin Laden's War on America and the Mission that Stopped Him. Abbottabad was founded in 1853 by James Abbott, a British army officer and colonial administrator, and because of its location in the mountains, is a popular summer retreat.

In the days and weeks that followed, the discovery of Bin Laden in a fortified compound located about a thousand yards from one of Pakistan's most prestigious military academies became an important topic in my consulting room. Many of my patients knew I had migrated to America from Pakistan. A few were aware that I visited Abbottabad routinely (this being the city my family lived in since I was 10). The Bin Laden compound's 18-feet-high, razor wire topped walls that concealed secrets behind them and defended against intruders became a significant metaphor in my mind and in the minds of many of my patients. It brought forth reactions that had to do both with external matters (political and social) and internal ones. I found myself renegotiating old and strong barriers in my mind as I struggled, yet again, between the need to deny a painful reality and an effort to see it more clearly: an ongoing journey for all human beings.

A poem I wrote in 1986, soon after I moved to the south of Pakistan and, later, to the U.S.A., highlights my earlier internal images of Abbottabad (and all that it represented for me)—images that often have to be revisited and reworked. It was just such a reworking that took place more actively after the discovery and killing of Bin Laden in Abbottabad and prompted me to begin work on a new paper titled “Abbottabad: Denial, Deception, and Discovery in the External World and the Analyst's Consulting Room.”