The Case of Darren in the Context of Historical, Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence towards and among Australia’s First Nations Peoples: A Response to Joye Weisel-Barth’s Case of Angie

ABSTRACT

Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence (FDSV) is a serious problem that is hidden in plain sight among all communities around the world. Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists have listened collectively to millions of stories from our patients about their experiences of FDSV and how it has harmed them deeply and enduringly. Joye Weisel-Barth’s paper, Shame and Punishment: The Case of Angie provides an excellent account of the added complexity of the recovery process from FDSV when traumatic experiences are endured concomitantly with historical, transgenerational trauma resulting from racist violence. This article considers the problem of FDSV in Australia’s First Nations communities who have been the targets of extreme racist violence for over two hundred years. The ways that contemporary psychoanalysts and psychotherapists can join other professionals in providing a holistic, culturally safe, and trauma-informed system of responses to FDSV survivors are then explored.

KEYWORDS:

• Australian Aboriginal
• First Nations Peoples
• family
• Domestic and Sexual Violence
• racism
• transgenerational trauma
• traditional healing
• holism
• process philosophy
• complexity

Disclosure Statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gerard Webster

Gerard Webster is a training and supervising psychoanalyst and faculty member of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles. He has worked with victims and perpetrators of family, domestic, and sexual violence in Australia for four decades initially as a counsellor of juvenile offenders, then as a child protection worker and, in private practice, a forensic and counselling psychologist. He is a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Vice President of the Australian Forensic Psychotherapy Association. He is past president of both the Australia and New Zealand Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abuse and the Australian Chapter of the International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.