Ground Zero: A Common Ground for the Analytic Dyad

Abstract

The memories and the visual images of 9/11 are embedded in the public psyche as remnants of a collective trauma, and this collectivity can serve to create a common ground and an intersubjective space for trauma work. In addition to emphasizing the importance of enactive witnessing and recognition in the healing process, I discuss in this paper the impact of trauma, including that of 9/11, that has been experienced from afar, as I was living in Ohio on September 11, 2001. I will also address the impact of experiencing a traumatic event from a physical distance on trauma work, using the concept of “distance” both literally and figuratively. The clinical illustrations provided all involve witnessing 9/11 on a television screen. Each vignette illustrates how the images themselves can be used as actual screens on which to project earlier trauma history. Similarly, part of the clinical work was done from afar. Telephone and virtual therapy at certain times facilitated both disclosures and, paradoxically, enhanced feelings of closeness. The analyst’s engagement in the process of witnessing facilitated connection to dissociated areas of experience, but enactive witnessing brought cohesiveness and clarity to the fragmentation caused by trauma and lack of early recognition. The clinical stories illustrate how this engagement enabled both participants to enliven deadened, dissociated parts of the self.

Keywords:

• collective trauma
• dissociation
• distance
• enactive witnessing
• screens

Acknowledgments

I would like to deeply thank Janet Benton PsyD, Robert Benedetti PhD, and Andrea Laznik MA for their close reading, comments, and ongoing encouragement. With gratitude to Joyce Slochower PhD for her ongoing support. With much appreciation to Rachel Altstein LP, JD, Karen Perlman, PhD, LP, and Allison Penn, JD, LP for their thoughtful editorial comments to the paper.

Disclosure Statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yael Greenberg

Yael Greenberg, PsyD ABPP, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Beachwood, Ohio. She is co-director of curriculum and a supervisor at the National Training Program at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) in NYC. She is a supervising and training analyst at the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center, a faculty at the Cleveland Clinical Foundation and is an adjunct clinical professor at Case Western Reserve University. She has written and presented about the topics of mourning and immigration, the analyst’s imagination, and shame in the analytic dyad.