Introduction to the Discussion

Eve Steel

(Spontaneous spoken response transcribed and edited.)

I acknowledge all the traditional owners of the country throughout Australia from the North to the South and from the East to the West. We have a vast covering of the country from all the participants here tonight. We also recognize and respect the ongoing stories, culture, people, the land, the waters, the creatures, the animals, the plants, the elements. We pay our respects to the Elders, past, present, and emerging.

I will highlight some of the essential issues, and share a few of my own.

It is clear from Matthew and Donna’s presentations, and others that have focused on the silence of any awareness of Aboriginal ownership, custodianship, culture & customs, living here for 60,000 years, that it was and is not just silence because it was forgotten, but silence because it was erased, not wanting to be known. It is not just the individual; ‘Why didn’t I know’ as Henry Reynolds asked; we would have to go and be confronted by Aboriginal people in the town and in the land, whom we’ve never seen before, and be so shocked. ‘Why didn’t they tell us?’, was his first book, which opened many windows in our minds. There have been many more books since from him and others. There is also refutation because there would be. 

That is really a foundation in this two-way series, whether we can open our colonial minds, and also a collective social unconscious, and not so unconscious.  We cannot avoid the socio-cultural reality in Australia. Bringing psychoanalytic work from within another context, a dyad in a consulting room, to an awareness in different places and different settings has been an endeavour in these meetings. These were highlighted last week by Craig, Pamela, and Kenny particularly, and what has become clear is the difference between the old complete cosmology, which had already been eroded in the 1970s, when Allan was adopted so generously and wonderfully by his community in the Kimberley. So much has changed. Kenny was quite clear, about how we have been catapulted in the last 30 years from that time into a digital age where one cannot avoid the contamination of that red poisonous snake (Craig), which has probably contaminated all of this in ways that we do not know, because we’re so socially embedded. I think the reality of the context where we all come from and are, is crucial in psychoanalytic understanding.

I want to mention the Elder’s in psychoanalysis which have been alluded to theoretically in these evenings: Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion and John Bowlby who has not been mentioned, whom I think is also important. I would like to acknowledge Ruth Dunn (in the audience) who wrote a relevant Master’s thesis on John Bowlby’s attachment theory related to her work with the Aboriginal people in Tennant Creek. She also used paintings to show their attachment to Country.

John Bowlby, Donald, and Claire Winnicott all did seminal work with evacuees in the 2nd world war, particularly children.  John Bowlby’s key theories on Attachment, Separation and Loss came out of his experiences in the war. Donald Winnicott, a paediatrician, (Allan), was working with children.  I had the good fortune to hear him talking about his sessions with children weekly, in the early 1960s and had on going connection later. He created a play-space. Everybody has alluded to the transitional space, the potential space, and the facilitating environment – holding, from Winnicott, which are seminal to psychoanalytic presence when working with huge uncertainty, pain, and loss.  As Pamela kept saying, “We don’t want to know too much, and take away from the emerging knowing of an unthought known”.

It is interesting to be aware of how these theoreticians, who are quoted, came at a particular time in history. Their theories were born out of their own experience. Bion was a tank commander, with the most traumatic experiences in WW1, and then worked with shell-shocked victims from WW2, and wrote his work on groups from these experiences.

Someone who has not been mentioned is Harold Bridger, who carried on from Bion, who lasted only six weeks at Northfield, because he did not understand the context that the ward, was within the whole hospital, who could not cope with his way of working. Harold Bridger brought in another awareness of context, which is relevant to our work.

It is pertinent to psycho-social work in the field, on Country, with isolated people in prison, or the young mothers that Kate and Donna so poignantly and beautifully portrayed in their extraordinary work. I wanted to bring those things in, because I think that ideas are born at certain times in history, and some are more meaningful than others in our own work in this area. 

Mishel, I wanted to acknowledge what you said about the new science catching up with us, because I think that is right. The quantum science is indeed acknowledging the inter relationship of everything, everywhere. It is incredibly challenging to the old reductionist science.  It also has vast repercussions in relation to our own work, which was born in the old science, and not this new-time.

One of the areas that we have not mentioned is the Field and the matrix. Working in a field, a psychic field, I would like to mention Rupert Sheldrake, who introduced the concept of a morpho-genetic field. His article was banned in the scientific journal Nature, it was seen as heretical.  His research on telepathy for instance was seen as unscientific. It is relevant to our work and what we may call uncanny. New ideas are banned and later they are understood to have merit; one can call it the Galileo principle. Given this, there is hope for an understanding of Indigenous cosmology, which is tied to nature. All Indigenous people see Country, Land, as Mother. That is where they have come from. There is no separation; the stars, the waters, country, earth, are all one. The whole cosmology that they are embedded in implies no separation, while our Western 2000 years have been all about separation. Experience of separation and coping with fear, loss and terror, forms much of our work. 

It is important to realize how hard it is to change, without understanding the social context. We need to acknowledge the importance of the issue of what we belong to, our identity. If we belong to the land and the country, and our whole cosmology is disrupted, destroyed, eradicated, there is no continuity. The links are destroyed, it is difficult for those who have experienced this to be fully met and presents different obstacles working in this area.

When Kenny said ‘Who are you? Where are you from? You do not belong in either world and feel lost. Where is your language?’, it is elementary, if their whole identity is linked to that, and it’s been destroyed and disrupted.  This it was also evident in Donna and Cate’s work. That is vastly different from living within the wholeness of a cosmology, which Mishel portrayed. It would be different to be born into that and have internalised that.

In the recent NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee) week I saw and heard many things. One was the ‘Homeland Story’, about a small community in East Arnhem Land, where an anthropologist has been visiting since 1971, which was in great danger of being disrupted and destroyed. There were obstacles and lack of help and no enabling hand, from the white bureaucracy. This was excruciating and cruel. In relation to Kate’s presentation, particularly where it is not just the inner world, it’s also the outer world, that needs to be recognised & acknowledged. The reality needs to be known about, that the poisonous red snake shown in Craig’s presentation, depicted in the painting, is present in these situations.

The CASSE (Creating a Safe Supportive Environment) initiative, where the young men are shown how to create their beautiful and important ceremonial tools, which forge links with their grandfathers, their land, to their sense of identity, & their sense of belonging, is impressive. (Shields for Living, Tools for Life is a cultural healing program for young offenders from the Alice Springs region to reduce the likelihood of reoffending and as an alternative to detention.)

Kenny, this is a question for you, about language. One of the things that came out in the Homeland story was the importance of language for the young people. They took such pride in having their own language, that they could say things in their own language, and even write it. This has also been lost, 250 languages; there were 500 languages; but barely 100 now.  Rachel Nordley spoke to Geraldine Doogue (ABC Radio National), about setting up a forgotten languages project at Melbourne University. This is significant and indicates of the importance of language, creating a sense of self & belonging to one's own group.

Kenny, I wonder whether you have thoughts about the schemes where children come from Aboriginal communities to schools in Melbourne and South Australia (they also come to schools in other cities in Australia) and then go back to the communities. It seems to have been a positive experience. I wonder whether you have thoughts about this. The children from the white communities have been enriched by being part of the Aboriginal communities & continued to have lasting relationships.

I would like to acknowledge Group relations work, Harold Bridger, whom I have mentioned before among others from the Tavistock Institute, which is based in a psychodynamic understanding of groups. There one is experiencing oneself in role, and there are clear roles and demarcations. Unless one knows the rules of the game of life, within a social context, one is really lost. A lot of these young people now are lost.  I remember going to Elcho Island and meeting a grandfather, who was brought up by the Methodist missionaries, and he was crying with me. He was saying “the young people have pidgin English, they don’t speak English, they just run around, and they don’t even have their own language properly either, they’re just lost; they do anything they want”. That is quite different from having agency, and the touching descriptions that Mishel gave. I think it is a broad spectrum in the social milieu.  The group relations work, in large groups and smaller groups, gives you human experience of group living together, with all the projections that occur.

Heidi (audience) kept bringing up projective identification, which I think is especially important. The countertransference can embrace the projective identification, so you can sort out what is you and what is not you. It reminds me of work that Herbert Hahn did in a week’s residential workshop in Germany, with descendants of Holocaust survivors and Holocaust perpetrators. The work was primarily done in Median groups. These were first created by Dr Pat de Mare, in London, after discussion with David Boehm. Both participant groups were terrified. Herbert Hahn ran daily Social Dreaming Groups. Before the end of the week, one of the people in the group said, “I’ve had nightmares all my life, and this is the first time in my life that I haven’t had a nightmare, and I realize it’s not my own”.

This introduces the issue of collective trauma and intergenerational trauma, and what is really in a soup of denial that other people get lumbered with. I think Kate said that very vividly about the Aboriginal young mothers, who are scapegoated, projected into, and are blamed.

The reality of working with trauma is sensitive. There has been a great deal of work on trauma beyond the psychoanalytic frame.  Bessel van der Kolk and other practitioners have highlighted bodily experience. The idea of “going gently since one does not know everything”, “don’t presume you know everything”, feels especially important. Trauma is embedded in the body. It is not in the mind, as it cannot be thought about. It is experienced in the body; it is so terrifying and so terrible. There has not been another to hold this in mind. There has not been the reverie and holding that psychoanalytic work in those groups that Kate and Donna described, where women could begin to have a different experience and relate to each other in a different way and grow together in a different way because of what is provided for them.

I thought the image of the snakes that Allan brought was so beautiful, with the two snakes entwining each other for creation, to make a third. How different that experience and vision is, to the black snake and the abusive relationship of the red poisonous snake containing toxicity and abuse (Craig).

I hope that there can be some different possibility emerging from this series, which is the beginning of a conversation.

Tim: I think everyone really appreciates your observations, and highlighting some of the other points, particularly the theoretical contributions. But I totally support the indication about John Bowlby and Attachment Theory. It is so very useful in our work, and it provides a good bridging language between us. I was also struck when you mentioned Harold Bridger and I thought about AK Rice as well (Whole Group Relation). Also, all the literature on the whole area of applied psychoanalysis and community psychoanalysis.  And what the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalysis has done to foster the development of that literature which is quite extensive now.

And I think we had in a lengthy discussion highlighted the comfortable fit between the psychoanalytic and the Aboriginal world view, particularly as espoused by the Ngankari healers (considered the treasure of Aboriginal communities). And then, in turn, that also made me realise that we are standing on the shoulders of others who have gone before us in our discussions and initiatives, because I was thinking there have been other earlier partnerships reflecting on the fact that the Ngankari were conjoint recipients of the World Council of Psychotherapy’s Sigmund Freud Award in 2011. There is an important history now, recognising what I’m calling a comfortable fit between world views that I think again has come through in this series.

Eve: Psychoanalysis is one of many frames. What I feel aware of in this work, the enormous pain that we suffer when we are overwhelmed, even as a non-worker, the overwhelm of what’s happened and the pain of it. We all need frames to make sense of our life experience, to give meaning. Some people have religion, others have the intellectual concepts. It is always people that have gone before. However, I think overall, psychoanalysis does not open to other dimensional realities. Jung is different, he had personal experience of his mother and grandmother as a psychic and medium and had a link with Gnostics from his own experience. It is possible that a Shamanistic understanding would be more helpful in understanding Alan’s experiences, and probably some of Craig’s.

I am not saying I know; I am just surmising that there is much mystery in O (Bion). I have heard Bion say that the grid was just a stage of him trying to make order of things.  He felt that painting and literature offered a more truthful understanding. I think we can go back to the image which comes up in trauma for the words, and then we can try and articulate things in words from those images.