The Return of the Repressed in the Assassination Attempt of Past President Trump

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

“History is not the past. It is the present. We are our history.” - James Baldwin

My 60th high school reunion is scheduled for this coming next weekend. During that last year of high school, 1963-64, President Kennedy was assassinated. He was the youthful hope after the elderly and ill President Eisenhower. That tragic outcome belies the current assumption that we inevitably would be better served by more youthful leadership. I know that traumatic memory was seared in the brains of my classmates and I in one way or another, as it must be for anyone of a certain age from that era. Saturday’s attempt on the life of Past President Trump cannot help but stir up those memories from their internal slumber.

Freud had a theoretical concept of the return of the repressed.¹ That concept refers to memories preserved in the unconscious because they were too unacceptable and traumatic to keep thinking about. However, they can reappear in consciousness or behavior under certain conditions, though the origins may be unrecognizable when that happens. One of the mechanisms for the repressed to penetrate consciousness is current experiences that resemble the repressed too much and strongly.

A related Freudian concept is repetition compulsion, which is the unconscious tendency to repeat a traumatic event like abuse in order to resolve it better.² Inevitably, some mistakes are made in the repetitions. Freud went even further with his controversial theory of a collective human death wish, which must be controlled.

If these Freudian ideas can have some application to a society, just think of all our current events that resemble the 1960s, especially 1968. In 1968, both Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The year ended with the release of the ever-popular song by the Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil.”

Now, an attempt on Past President Trump just occurred and an attendee of the rally was killed. The Republican National Convention starts tomorrow in my hometown of Milwaukee. The Democratic convention in Chicago in August of 1968 was laced with violence centered on the protests against the Vietnam War. President Johnson had already dropped out of the prior election. Recently there have been calls for Biden to drop out, too. This August the Democratic Convention will return to Chicago with wars going on in Ukraine and Gaza.

It took the assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981 for such political motivated attempts to go into remission. They returned yesterday. Our country’s polarization cannot afford further examples.

Platitudes will not do. Nor will displacing blame. Here are my prescriptions for more positive roles for all Americans.

• For us in psychiatry: With our patients who have buried traumatic memories, we carefully help them to examine and reframe them, so can we apply our knowledge and skills to reconsider the remnants from the 1960s that have been inadequately processed and reframed?
• For the media: Perhaps scholarly media presentations on the connections between then and now might help.
• For all our citizens: In the meanwhile, for the country, how about a simple pledge of allegiance not to repeat the violence of the 1960s?
• For the dead perpetrator: A psychological autopsy has begun to try to figure out his motivation, which in turn might help future preventive measures.
• For the political parties: Gun violence took its toll once again, with the ease of the perpetrator obtaining a military-style rifle, as well as ammunition that very afternoon of the shooting.
• For our political leaders: President Biden and Past President Trump may have made a start as Biden reached out to Trump, and Trump vowed to do a more unifying speech as all eyes are on the Republican Convention.

As often occurs after a very traumatic close call of dying, especially one that seems miraculous like Mr Trump turning his head as never before as the gun fired during the rally, there is a change for the better. A new vision, resilience, and posttraumatic growth is possible. The United States of American now has a new opportunity to live up to our name and avoid a future repetition like that over 60 years ago.

Not “fight,” but unite.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

References

1. Freud S. Moses and Monotheism. Martin Fine Books; 2010.

2. Malcolm J. Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession. Knopf Doubleday; 1982.