Plenary Presentation:
• Juhani Ihanus:
Relational Psychohistory, Trauma, and Memory: On Individual and Collective Life Stories as Healing Testimonies
(60 min)

Abstract: 

In my presentation, I will argue that psychohistory is an intersubjective, transformative, and transdisciplinary field of research. Both individual and collective traumatic memories are repressed and cross borders within networks and entanglements that extend beyond stable memory archives in many directions and connections. Trauma impedes the ability to remember otherwise and access and reassess the repressed. However, trauma can also serve as a resource for memory, connecting it to personal and collective growth, as well as the development of empathy and resilience.

Relational psychohistory can be transformative, offering alternative meanings and migratory and diasporic perspectives that encourage creative dialogue about our evolving inner and outer limits. Psychohistorical material is not merely research “object,” but rather a complex web of sources, life stories, testimonies, and voices. The affective meanings, (counter-) transferences, poetic metaphors, reveries, and reflections that arise are not solely “in the text” or “in the researcher.” Psychohistorians co-construct and re-relate psychohistorical knowledge through their subjectivity, as well as through individual and collective memories, life stories, and cultural matrices.

This co-created, intersubjective, psychohistorical, interpretive constellation is analogous to the “analytic third,” as formulated by Thomas Ogden. Through the psychohistorical “third,” individual and group dynamics can be linked with interactions involving different life stories, group fantasies, and practices across generations, nations, and cultures. Relational psychohistory is important for understanding and witnessing the impact of trauma and the healing process.

The presentation relates to two subthemes of the conference: “Understanding Individual and Collective Psychology” and “Pathways to Healing and Transformation.”

Keywords: analytic third, collective psychology, group fantasies, healing, intersubjectivity, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, transdisciplinary, trauma

Short Bio of the Presenter: 

Juhani Ihanus, PhD, is an associate professor of psychology and of cultural Psychology (University of Helsinki), of the history of science and ideas (University of Oulu), and of art education and art psychology (Aalto University). He is also a poet, writer, essayist, and translator. Ihanus is a pioneer of European biblio/poetry therapy and co-founded the Finnish Association for Biblio/Poetry Therapy in 1981, the first organization of its kind in Europe. He is an international member of the Psychohistory Forum. He sits on the editorial boards of several academic journals, notably The Journal of Psychohistory, Clio’s Psyche, The Arts in Psychotherapy, The Journal of Poetry Therapy, and Scriptum. He has authored approximately 540 publications, including books, articles, reviews, and essays, spanning various fields such as psychology, psychohistory, the history of the human sciences, cultural studies, poetry therapy, literature, and the arts. Additionally, he has published collections of poetry and aphorisms, as well as translations from various languages into Finnish. Dr. Ihanus can be reached at .