Psychoanalysis in the News

by Molly Merson, MFT

How Trump Trauma is Resurrecting the Jim Crow Era. Psychologist Theopia Jackson illustrates how African American and indigenous people and people of color are being retraumatized through the racism of the Trump administration and its supporters, and how the field of psychology and psychotherapy is navigating this terrain.

How Mid-Century Arab Thinkers Embraced the Ideas of Freud. Freud was first translated into Arabic in the 20th century, and from there, psychoanalysis found its way into Egyptian politics, the Egyptian military, social welfare, and even its courtrooms. The article concludes with a warning about the many uses of psychoanalysis: it can open one's mind to possibilities, as well as to close it in order to exert social control.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Israel. The author explores what gets evoked, for the author and others, during an exchange on a psychoanalytic listserv regarding the IARPP's decision to host its 2019 conference in Israel.