Escape from Kabul: Survival and Moral Injury

ABSTRACT

The terror encountered by women in Afghanistan because of the military withdrawal of United States and its allies in the summer of 2021 is ongoing. The first part of this paper describes emergency clinical interventions provided to two young university Kabul women wishing to escape the Taliban. The second part of this paper explores ideas about moral injury and this psychologist-psychoanalyst’s motives for focusing on the survival of the two women.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ For a sense of the developments in Afghanistan at the time see this video clip from America and the Taliban, Part 3. PBS, 38:00–42:3:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/america-and-the-taliban/#video-3

² A major guiding value of psychoanalysis is the relief from suffering and impaired functioning. Moreover, analysts are careful about imposing their values on their analysands. But moral values are sometimes difficult to categorize. For instance, biases toward individualism especially in the United States can be considered a moral value. This writer places great moral value on survival especially when the patient explicitly asks for such.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Spyros D. Orfanos

Spyros D. Orfanos, PhD., A.B.P.P., is Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), he is past president of the Society of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (SPPP) of the APA, and the International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is on the Advisory Board of the Sigmund Freud Museum of Vienna. In 2016, he was co-editor with Eliot Jurist of the special supplement of Psychoanalytic Psychology (APA) on “Psychoanalysis and the Humanities.” In 2017, he founded the NYU Human Rights Work Group. In 2023, year he received the SPPS Award for International Activism for Social Justice. He served as Honorary President of the Fourth Iranian Congress of Psychoanalysis & Dynamic Psychotherapy “Living and Thinking in an Unsettling World,” Aug 30- Sep 01, 2023. Tehran, Iran.