Another Repressed Returns: the Re-Branding of German Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Coming to terms with the past is never a straightforward affair, for individuals, organisations or whole societies, particularly when that past is traumatic or remains subject to contentious dispute. Under these conditions, past events continue to stir up strong emotions that, if unacknowledged, can come to dominate the present and the future, unspoken passions that circulate without end. In the case of organisations, this can mean the construction of institutional defences attempting to ‘contain’ or manage these emotions, but it can also result in the construction of these organisations along the lines of the hidden past; that is, failures to deal with what is ‘repressed’ in institutional life can lead to the repressed itself being constitutive of the institution. A bad history tends not to die quietly when denied, but rather to poison the body within which it lies. In relation particularly to institutional pasts felt to be shameful — and there are many of these, often taking the form of collaboration with an oppressive power — denial of what has happened and prolonged refusal to look it squarely in the face can result in the institution distorting its history and its aims, and losing credibility in its own eyes as well as in those of others.

This chapter is based closely on Chapter 5 of Stephen Frosh’s book, Hate and the ‘Jewish Science’: Anti-Semitism, Nazism and Psychoanalysis, London: Palgrave, 2005.