Recollecting the Vanishing Forms of 9/11: Twenty Years of Ruptures, Ripples, and Reflections

Abstract

The events of 9/11 have been vanishing from memories. Yet it was a pivotal event in world history and in many families’ individual life cycles. Enduring losses and ruptures have rippled into both intensely personal moments and our sociopolitical processes. We vowed initially never to forget. But the problem we faced in the aftermath of the terrifying attacks became how best to remember. Twenty years later the author reflects on those historical events from her perspective as the Consulting Psychologist to Thinc Design, the exhibition design team for the National September 11 Memorial Museum. Using now her senses attuned to the 9/11 trauma narrative and its effects on group processes, as well as her habit of thinking about memory as multi-directional dialogue among disparate-in-time meanings, she attempts to locate 9/11 in a historical constellation with Hiroshima, the War on Terror, Latin American 9/11, COVID, Black Lives Matter, dissociated grief and grievance, and the 1/6 US Capital Insurrection.

Keywords:

• 9/11
• memorialization
• historical trauma
• multi-directional memory
• group incohesion

Acknowledgments

A portion of this paper draws on an earlier version published as Pivnick, B.A. (2021, Spring). Unity Beyond Trauma? Clio’s Psyche, 27, 3, 294–299. The author would also like to acknowledge Mr. Tom Hennes and Dr. Jane Hassinger for their astute reading of prior drafts.

Notes

¹ For more complete descriptions of the 9/11 memorialization project, please refer to (Pivnick, 2011, 2013, 2015a, &, 2017, 2018) as well as to (Pivnick & Hennes, 2014).

² I took as my consultation model that of George Moraitis (1979) who saw his role as a psychoanalyst to historians as observing, reading, and thinking about the materials he was offered while refraining from personality interpretations. Although he engaged in dialogue with historians in order to help him clarify their positions, he often held in mind disavowed feelings until they could be better integrated. The consultant him/herself becomes the laboratory for processing the material.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Billie A. Pivnick

Billie A. Pivnick, PhD is a psychoanalytic psychologist in private practice in NYC, specializing in treating individuals and families suffering from traumatic loss. She is faculty/supervisor in the William Alanson White Institute Child/Adolescent Psychotherapy Program, the New Directions Psychoanalytic Writing Program, and the Columbia University/Teachers College Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program. Co-creator/co-host of the Couched podcast, she also won APA’s 2015 Schillinger Award for her essay Spaces to Stand In: Applying Clinical Psychoanalysis to the Relational Design of the National September 11 Memorial Museum.