The title of this post, “Psychology and Dehumanization” describes a course developed by Harvey Peskin, PhD and me that highlights a particular problem in modern psychology; Dehumanization. Dr. Peskin died on April 18, 2018. The follwoing was written during the years Harvey and I taght this course at the Wright Institue and NCSPP.
Dehumanization is both a description of the way a powerful group, often methodically turns fellow citizens or neighbors into objects deserving of marginalization, expulsion enslavement, or annihilation. Dehumanization is also a psychological process by which the” other” is turned into a thing.
Dehumanization is a psychological problem because we as psychologists often face the victims of dehumanization and we must be equipped to help them through the process of rehumanization. It is not enough to meet at our clients where they are. We must be alert to the history of the problem, the wisdom, counsel and clinical judgment that many writers, scholars and clinicians have bequeathed to us. And finally we must be alert to our own political, cultural and personal views of working with the survivors of mass violence.
In light of the overwhelming number of occurrences of dehumanization we have developed a course highlighting the situations worldwide where dehumanization occurs and a course for developing the clinical possibility of re-humanization. We view the role of psychotherapist as necessarily being linked to both cultural and social movements. The path back from the dehumanization comes forth from many directions. These often include the act of witnessing and acknowledging. Witnessing from our viewpoint contains the essential elements of not turning away from the horrors that have occurred. This can take place in a public forum, in forums where families from opposing sides talk to each other, from movies that highlight a silenced truth, and of course, in a psychotherapists consultation room. The other construct that we will delve into is acknowledgment. Acknowledgment is the process by which the victims reality is given the admission of its authenticity that was denied due to the constructs of the dehumanization and genocidal actions.
Here is the Outline for our course:
Dehumanization: From Trauma to Treatment
Trauma––acute and cumulative––of mass violence and crimes against humanity are viewed here as disorders of dehumanization. This course considers treatment as a process of rehumanization for survivors of the Holocaust, genocide and atrocity both in North America and elsewhere. Such trauma becomes intractable when human suffering goes unwitnessed or unacknowledged through secretiveness, disbelief, apathy, dread or vengeance of community and society. Rehumanization prevails over retraumatization when traumatic injury finds therapeutic witness. The seminar strives to render disorders of dehumanization in Freudian, Kleinian and Relational terms.
Objectives
- Understand the history of aggression and its relationship with trauma within the psychoanalytic tradition.
- Understand the terms dehumanization and rehumanization and how they link with crimes against humanity and therapeutic technique.
- Define how the terms “therapeutic witness” and “acknowledgement” are used within psychodynamic psychotherapy.
- Understand impediments to clinical work with victims of torture from both interpersonal, countertransference and social justice perspectives.
- How does ‘intergenerational transmission of trauma’ manifest in the consulting room?
- Work collaboratively with attendees to develop skills to treat victims of dehumanization.
Teachers:
Harvey Peskin, Ph.D. (PSY1676)
Dr. Peskin has been engaged in the private practice of psychotherapy for individuals, couples and families; in graduate and post-graduate teaching and supervision of psychoanalysts, clinical psychologists and psychological assistants; and in life-span study of longitudinal samples. His special areas of clinical and research interest include psychological health in adult development and aging, empirical investigation of psychoanalytic theory, and treatment of survivors of crimes against humanity.
Dr. Peskin is professor emeritus at San Francisco State University, contract faculty at The Wright Institute, former clinical professor of psychology at University of California, San Francisco, and faculty and former president of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. He served on the board of Survivors International. In 2013 Dr. Peskin won the Hayman Prize for Published Work Pertaining to Traumatized Children and Adults “Man is a Wolf to Man: Disorders of Dehumanization in Psychoanalysis.” which he presented at the 2013 IPA congress in Prague, The Czech Republic.
Larry Miller, PhD (PSY 18163)
Dr. Miller, a Berkeley based psychologist, has extensive experience working with torture survivors, prisoners on death row as a psychosocial historian, and child victims of trauma. He is the Practicum Training Director of Child Haven Inc, a treatment clinic in Fairfield, CA providing trauma therapy for children and families. He has taught multiple courses at the Wright Institute including Beginning Child Psychotherapy.
Course Readings
Gregory Stanton (1998). Eight stages of genocide.
Hannah Arendt (1945). Organizational guilt and universal responsibility. (excerpt)
Judith Herman: Trauma and Recovery
Richard Goldstone (2001). Crimes against humanity–Forgetting the victim.
Ernest Jones Lecture, British Psychoanalytic Society. 22 p.
Ghislaine Boulanger (2008). Witnesses to reality: Working psychodynamically with
survivors of terror. Psychanal. Dial., 18: 638-657.
Chana Ullman (2009). Bearing witness: Across the barriers in society and in the
clinic. Psychoanal. Dial., 16: 181-198.
Ariel Dorfman (1991). Afterword to’Death and the Maiden’. pp. 75-79
Martha Minow (1998). Vengeance and forgiveness. In Between Vengeance and
Forgiveness. pp. 9-24 (plus Notes).
Michael Ignatieff (1996). Articles of faith. In Index on Censorship, 5, 110-122.
Harvey Peskin (2012). ‘Man is a wolf to man’: Disorders of dehumanization in
psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues (in press). 37 p.
Nanette Auerhahn, Dori Laub & Harvey Peskin (1993). Psychotherapy with
Holocaust survivors. Psychotherapy, 30, 434-442.
Jean Amery (1980). Torture. In At The Mind’s Limits. pp. 21-40
Yolanda Gampel (1992). I was a Shoah child. British J of Psychotherapy, 8.
391-399.
Bahman Nirumand (2001). Forward. In At the Side of Torture Survivors, ed. S.
Graessner, pp. xi-xiii.
Gerald Gray (2006). Psychology and U.S. psychologists in torture and war in the
Middle East. Torture, 16, 128-133 (plus Gray’s letter to colleagues).
Terry Kupers (2010). American prisons and torture. 13 p.
Primo Levi (1986). The Drowned and the Saved.
Nanette Auerhahn & Harvey Peskin (2003). Action knowledge, acknowledgment
and interpretive action in work with Holocaust survivors. Psychoanal. Q.,
72: 615-658.
Dori Laub (1992). Bearing witness or the vicissitudes of listening. In Testimony:
Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. pp. 57-74.
Donna Nagata (1998). Intergenerational effects of the Japanese American
internment. In International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of
Trauma. ed. Y. Danieli. pp. 125-139.
Peter Fonagy (1999). Attachment, the Holocaust and the outcome of child
psychoanalysis: An attachment based model of transgenerational transmission of
trauma. (mss). 33 p.
Haydee Faimberg (1988). The telescoping of generations. Contemp Psychanal., 23,
99-118.
Nancy McWilliams (2005). Preserving our humanity as therapists. Psychotherapy.
42: 139-151.
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