Encountering Silencing: Forms of Oppression in Individuals, Families and Communities

Editors Michael B. Buchholz and Aleksandar Dimitrijevic´ are joined by Ana Altaras Dimitrijevic´, Uta Blohm, Roger Frie, Stephen Frosh, Babette Gekeler, Gail A. Hornstein, and Hans-Christoph Ramm to share their knowledge, research, and experience on these dark issues. Encountering Silencing is an invitation to closely observe the very practices and processes of silencing used by perpetrators of abuse and totalitarian institutions alike. A carefully selected group of contributors reveal the dark side of communication that silences victims, witnesses, and perpetrators: women, religious heretics, gifted children, victims of racism, psychoanalytic dissidents, and psychiatric patients; individuals and groups, total strangers and one’s family members, as well as one own self. All of these forms of silencing are analysed with the help of literature, historiography, interviewing, archival research, and psychoanalytic and family therapy. This book helps us to face the seemingly inevitable conclusion that silencing is everywhere in our individual and social lives, and that it is the silencing of trauma that leads to mental disorders more than trauma itself. The hope is that by opening up these topics in a considered, containing, and thoughtful way, the underlying mechanisms of trauma-related disorders will be better understood and help victims to overcome them. Encountering Silencing is the first in a series of three books on this vital but overlooked subject.