Individual presentation:
• Hanaah Lansel:
Reflections and Parallels of Korea’s Modern History to My Personal Experiences
(60 min)
Abstract:
The causes of many historical developments and traumatic events in different cultures may seem different, but a pattern of the projection of negative intergenerational schizoid, borderline, and narcissistic psychic content from prevailing or more powerful groups onto weaker members of society does not change, revealing a denial of a horrific reality in the perception of history. For example, the reaction of the European populous at the outbreak of WWI (how the public of European nations were joyous at the news of the WWI outbreak), the reaction of the French public on the verdict of the Dreyfus Trial, the Cultural Revolution of Communist China*, and the honor killing of women in Muslim society are all in the same vein—a result of negative projective identifications. There are such events in modern Korea history, but they are not as well known.
Historically, Korea is a small country surrounded by powerful states. Thus, Korea had to adapt many ways to resist getting swallowed up by neighboring states. During the 1600s — 1800s (mid to late Joseon Dynasty), before Korea was divided, it became isolationist without any outside trade. Due to limited resources, commerce, and communications largely caused by war and a rigid Confucian hierarchical ruling philosophy, Joseon Dynasty’s culture itself became an unrelenting force that implemented draconian measures to the populous. The living conditions became so bad that the average person’s life expectancy in late 1800s was less than in the mid-20s.
Today, in political, economic, and cultural terms, North Korea is an extension of the late Joseon Dynasty in terms of its repressive practices, closed-door policy, and extremely limiting social practices. During 1600s – 1800s, it could be argued that Korea was in a worse situation than modern North Korea. Given such conditions, undesirable psychic contents were projected onto the weaker members of society due to less resistance. In terms of Object Relations theory, idealizing bad objects with compartmentalized / schizoid ways of thinking sanctioned and absolved such acts of projection. However, what is essentially an emptying out of negative psychic content does not resolve anything because the pathological psychic structure remains the same, which makes the situation worse. Therefore, such intergenerational schizoid, borderline, and narcissistic patterns have continued. At times, such patterns may be resolved by chance, but they continue today. The difference is, in the past, the lack of a selfhood concept in terms of rights and responsibilities as a whole self and the lack of familiar concepts of interactions from such a perspective in society made this negative pattern worse.
Using Object Relations theories developed by Ronald Fairbairn, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, further developed by Susan Kavaler-Adler, and others, this presentation will show how such projective patterns in modern Korea’s historical events and cultural paradigms in relation to World history at the time were not much different from my traumatic personal experiences while living in South Korea—though on the surface they may seem different and unrelated.
* In the case of the Cultural Revolution, the ‘traditional’ role of projector and projected are reversed, but the psychic content of what is projected and how the projected are treated remains in the same categories – as is throughout the history.
Keywords: cultural violence, intergenerational trauma, Joseon Dynasty, Korean history, object relations, projective identification, psychohistory, traumatic experience
Short Bio:
Hanaah Lansel was born and raised in South Korea and moved to United States when she was a teenager. Her parents raised her to be a violinist, but that suddenly changed when her family immigrated to USA. In the USA, Hanaah received a B.A. in Economics and has 2 nutritional certifications. She was always curious about history and human science, which she continued to study on her own. Her interest in history, coupled with her own personal history of family and school trauma, motivated her to study the human psyche in relation to history. Hanaah is currently studying Psychology at the Object Relations Institute (https://www.orinyc.org). She can be reached at .