Collective traumas – personal overcoming To memory of T. N. Puskaryova

Psychoanalytic theories of trauma

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to memory of Ukrainian psychoanalyst T. N. Pushkaryova and her contribution to investigation of traumatic experience on individual and social level. It contained a short review of psychoanalytic trauma theories and the theory of transgenerational transmission of traumatic experience. There are an investigation of difficulties of psychoanalytic work with traumatized patients and a clinical example of such work in the paper. It is suggested a necessity of simultaneous attention to historical experience, repetition in transference and to unconscious phantasy. A special attention is paid to the necessity of transference, countertransference and enactments analysis in the situation of analyst’s and patient’s involvement in common social context. In relation to that it considers the psychoanalytical contribution to understanding and overcoming of historical traumas, the concept of paranoid elaboration of mourning and the conditions of social thinking of traumatic experience, such as an elimination of existential threats and identity threats. Some positive examples of common traumatic experience comprehension are described, as well as some breakdowns of such process in contemporary Ukraine and Russia.