How to Build the Other From Scratch After Its Destruction?

Madness and traumas experienced as violent ruptures of the social link challenge mainstream psychoanalysis upon its oblivion of History. Historical catastrophes such as recent plagues and wars create zones of loneliness and silence transmitted along generations. They surface uncannily through unconscious revivals. The claim here is that the unconscious at stake here is not the repressed unconscious dealing with the symbolic chain. People with extreme lived experiences are familiar with such a dissociated unconscious and use it as a tool of survival, but also of research, to fight ruthless agencies for whom the other does not exist. These tie to current trends in trauma studies, particularly those addressing the ruptures of social and personal frameworks. Transference, in this case, fosters interferences that happen by coincidence in a stoppage of time. Then she becomes a “therapôn,” a word attested in the Iliad where it means “the second in combat” and “the ritual double” in charge of funeral duties. These concepts and metaphors offer ways that psychoanalytic approaches get at the disorganization of trauma, particularly its ties to survivors of horrors, war, and violence. The rhythm of the epic reanimates the breath of life as well as ritual theaters performed across the globe over the centuries.