Musings About “Repetition Compulsion and Sociopolitical Trauma: A Neoliberal Artifact”

ABSTRACT

This discussion of Anne Friedman and Ora Nakash’s paper focuses on questions and considerations of how socio-political trauma is transmitted and how it may be addressed in therapeutic treatment. It looks especially at developmental considerations of how trauma is communicated and received. The psychoanalytic literature on transmission of racial and Holocaust trauma (e.g., Gerson, Levy-Warren, Salberg, Stoute) is utilized as a basis for raising questions about the utility of using the concept of the repetition compulsion as a means for describing the potential traumatic impact of neo-liberalism. In the clinical realm, the discussion moves to the complex issues related to how and when to address socio-political trauma in treatment, and to what end we do so.

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Repetition Compulsion and Sociopolitical Trauma: A Neoliberal Artifact

View responses to this article:

Expanding Our Seeing: A Reply to Levy-Warren and Gaztambide

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Marsha H. Levy-Warren

Marsha H. Levy-Warren, Ph.D. is a Supervising and Training Analyst at The Contemporary Freudian Society, CIPS, and the International Psychoanalytical Association, and faculty member and clinical consultant in the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, She is the author of The Adolescent Journey (Jason Aronson, ©1996; reissued, Rowman & Littlefield, 2004) and numerous articles on adolescence, developmental and clinical theory, media, and culture. She is in private practice with adolescent and adult patients in New York City.