by Willow Banks, Psy.D.

When I stepped into the presidency in January, I was warned by past presidents that the year would fly by, and very quickly I saw the truth of it. Our last board meeting of the year has passed, and we are moving toward a period of rest and preparation for the year ahead. I feel appreciation for the efforts of the board this year, and for the atmosphere of care and collaboration we have fostered in our meetings. In years past, the NCSPP holiday party was a reliable way for us to end the year by joining with our membership in celebration. This holiday season, we are planning to hold a winter gathering in appreciation of our membership in early 2024, which will hopefully be a bright spot in the coming months.

The ending of this year coincides with the outbreak of war in the Middle East. In her piece for this issue, Impulse’s Editor-in-Chief Luba Palter found the words to movingly describe her response, and I relate to her struggle to bear the conflicting thoughts and emotions. I have encountered rage, grief, and numbness in response to the violence, and to the conflict that emerged in community listserv dialogues. Despite an atmosphere of seemingly intractable polarity that has pervaded these communications, I have felt gratitude and respect for the way many in the analytic community have refused to give up trying to reach one another, and to metabolize the horror and dehumanization that tears at our social fabric.

There is a Zen koan that says, “When you can do nothing, what can you do?” I find the paradoxical guidance of koans to be helpful in times of crisis when tolerating “not knowing,” in both the psychoanalytic and Buddhist sense, feels out of reach. I do not suggest that we can do nothing in the face of inhumane acts and massive suffering. Instead, I am acknowledging the abject helplessness we feel when we bear witness. The pain of witnessing undoes the thinking capacity we would otherwise access on behalf of others and ourselves. So then, any attempt we make to think despite the unthinkable as well as to contain each other’s traumatic overwhelm, is entirely something other than nothing.