Why "Bystanders No More"?

An astonishing story lies behind the conference I attended in New York in May this year. Its a story about a largely hidden genocide of 100 years ago and the effect of its horrors on the silenced and unacknowledged survivors. A story of how this history was put centre stage by a second-generation survivor and what her colleagues then did about it. A story also of healing, generosity of spirit and reconciliation.

So, what happened?
The last International Self Psychology Conference was held in Turkey in October 2010. Present at the previous US conference in 2009, where the next venue was announced, was an analyst, the daughter of a survivor of the Armenian genocide in Turkey in 1915-23.

She was very disturbed by this announcement but was unable to articulate how outraged and upset she felt.
Later that day, she went to a presentation by an ex-South African. This paper was about how being in the role of a bystander as a young person in apartheid South Africa was impacting on her role as a therapist. The analyst

suddenly understood more about what she was feeling. She later described, "I understood that I was experiencing old, retraumatizing fears of being silenced and incredible shame for feeling like a bystander to the rape, torture and murder of my grandparents; my aunt ......and all the victims of the Armenian Genocide."  Once this came together, she stood up and with crystal clarity said all she had wanted to say earlier that day. (Jane Lewis: Discussion paper for panel on Dialogue on Genocide)

This was apparently a very emotional moment for everyone - not least a Turkish analyst in the audience. Colleagues introduced them. They approached each other with great trepidation but agreed to meet. A tentative link was made. Over the next year, the colleagues of these two took action. Further links were made with Turkish analysts. There was a long and fruitful correspondence moving towards reconciliation with the two who had originally met. The Armenian analyst was also made aware of a movement in Turkey trying to expose the history of the Armenian Genocide - the members of which risk imprisonment and death. In Turkey its illegal to even talk about these historical facts of almost a century ago! The lack of acknowledgement and memorialisation compounds the trauma that is passed on intergenerationally.

"THOSE WHO FELL BY THE WAYSIDE. Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces, in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms---massacre, starvation, exhaustion---destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation"(US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr.)




The practitioners who witnessed the pain of their colleague were not content to remain as just witnesses - let alone bystanders. They became activists on her behalf, creating a healing environment for her. Apparently this led them to think about the elements that were involved in doing that and how the knowledge they had gained could be extended. Hence the conference: Bystanders No More: Psychoanalytic Dialogues with the Politically Silenced.

Poster by Pablo Gostanian