Collective Trauma

Collapse of a World

Helen Davey | Posted 02.15.2012

Read More: Trauma, Collapse of Pan Am, Terrorism, Collective Trauma, Flight 103, Aviation History, Pan Am, Bankruptcy, Lifestyle, Life Changes, Great Recession, Recession, Business News
Helen Davey

I'm struck by the similarity of the feelings of instability in the world now with how we Pan Am employees felt as our company began to fail.

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Trauma, Death, and Resurrection: A Russian-American Conversation

Robert D. Stolorow | Posted 11.07.2011

Read More: Societal Collapse, War on Terror, Existential Vulnerability, George W. Bush, Collective Trauma, 9/11, Loss, Social Death, Death, Resurrective Ideology, Irreversible Trauma, Collapse of USSR, Vladimir Putin, World Collapse, Homo Mortalis, Man-God, World News
Robert D. Stolorow

(An invited conversation between myself [RDS] and Russian social philosopher and journalist Sergei Roganov [SR].) RDS: You were kind enough to contac...

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Stories Of Loss And Chaos: The Ninth Of Av And The 10th Anniversary Of 9/11

Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster | Posted 10.08.2011

Read More: Rabbis for Human Rights, Interfaith Dialogue, Tisha B'Av, Tisha B'av 2011, Judaism, Jewish Mourning, Religious Tolerance, Book of Lamentations, 9/11 Anniversary, Collective Trauma, Jewish Storytelling, September 11 Anniversary, Religion News
Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster

Tisha B'Av has been a way for the Jewish community to confront and contain trauma through the telling of stories. But after 9/11, how can we have unity when we aren't clear what story we are telling?

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The Meaning and the Rhetoric of Evil: Auschwitz and Bin Laden

Robert D. Stolorow | Posted 08.27.2011

Read More: George Bush, Freud, Manichaeism, Trauma, Ronald Reagan, Rwandan Genocide, Terrorism, Japan Nuclear Crisis, Existential Vulnerability, 9/11, Collective Trauma, Heidegger, Holocaust, Hannah Arendt, Evil, Osama Bin Laden, Nihilism, Radical Rvil, Nazis, Resurrective Ideology, Crusades, Auschwitz, Friedrich Nietzsche, Global Warming, Totalitarianism, World News
Robert D. Stolorow

Is there an alternative to ideological illusion and the rhetoric of evil? Yes, there is. We must remember our common human vulnerabilities and bring them into a collective conversation within which our existential anxiety can be held and better borne.

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Death and Resurrection

Robert D. Stolorow | Posted 07.03.2011

Read More: Collective Trauma, 9/11, Osama Bin Laden Dead, Resurrective Ideology, Southern Tornadoes, Japan Nuclear Crisis, Existential Vulnerability, World News
Robert D. Stolorow

The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 was a devastating collective trauma that inflicted a rip in the fabric of the American psyche. In horrifyin...

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Japan's Earthquake and Apocalyptic Terror

Robert D. Stolorow | Posted 11.17.2011

Read More: Japan Tsunami, Japan Earthquake, San Andreas Fault, Earthquake Preparedness, Collective Trauma, California Nuclear Power Plants, Los Angeles, Japan Nuclear Catastrophe, September 11, Post-Traumatic Stress, Healthy Living News
Robert D. Stolorow

Earthquakes, especially catastrophic ones, shake our confidence in the very ground we stand on and confront us with the groundlessness of our existence, wherein no certainty, safety, or continuity of being can be assured.

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Earthquakes, Trauma, and Existential Anxiety

Robert D. Stolorow | Posted 11.17.2011

Read More: 9/11, Haiti Earthquake, Existential Anxiety, Groundlessness, Los Angeles, San Andreas Fault, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Collective Trauma, Healthy Living News
Robert D. Stolorow

Angelenos who live by the San Andreas Fault Line live in a vague state of anxiety. It is an existential anxiety -- about our own existence and the existence of all those whom we love.

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The Lesson of 9/11

Robert D. Stolorow | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Collective Grandiosity, Collective Trauma, 9/11, Bush Administration, Global Terrorism, Existential Vulnerability, September 11th, Al Qaeda, Politics News
Robert D. Stolorow

The attack of 9/11 shattered our collective illusions of safety, inviolability, and grandiose invincibility, illusions that had long been mainstays of the American historical identity.

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Blues, Trauma, Finitude

Robert D. Stolorow | Posted 11.17.2011

Read More: Dialogue, Collective Trauma, Finitude, Trauma, Existential-Vulnerability, African Americans, Slavery, Blues, Healthy Living News
Robert D. Stolorow

With roots in African music, the blues was born in the Mississippi delta as a distinctively African American musical genre in response to the de-humanizing traumas of slavery and its aftermath.

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'Empathic Civilization' in an Age of Trauma

Robert D. Stolorow | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: President Obama, Empathic Understanding, Resurrective Ideology, Trauma, Mirror-Neurons, Economic Crisis, Existential Vulnerability, 9/11, Collective Trauma, Loss, Global Terrorism, Death, Jeremy Rifkin, George W. Bush, Arianna's Reading, The Empathic Civilization, Books News
Robert D. Stolorow

If we can help one another bear the darkness rather than evade it, perhaps one day we will be able to see the light.

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Horrors of the Haiti Earthquake and the Power of Human Understanding

Robert D. Stolorow | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Collective Trauma, Empathic Understanding, Haiti Earthquake, World News
Robert D. Stolorow

"There is so much to tell, but I hope that this small sample will convey the feelings and needs of the Haitians. In many ways, I feel that our trip was such a small contribution that it barely has meaning."

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"Radical Evil"

Robert D. Stolorow | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Theodicy, Collective Trauma, 9/11, Atrocities, Morality, Auschwitz, Eichmann, Evil, Destructiveness, Totalitarianism, Nihilism, Books, Books News
Robert D. Stolorow

Richard Bernstein has written an important philosophical inquiry into the phenomenon of evil (Bernstein 2002), an inquiry that will be of great value to psychoanalysts.

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