The Role of Memory in Social Conflicts

This video series is taking a short break while Dr Moffic is away. For now, enjoy the rerun of this video with updated commentary.

To open this rerun video from about a year ago, my wife Rusti began by singing an excerpt from the popular musical theatre show "Cats." The song called "Memory" has this stanza:

“Daylight

I must wait for the sunrise

And I mustn’t give in.

When the dawn comes,

tonight will be a memory too

And a new day will begin.”

It suggests the need for continued hope in difficult times, which is what we are having now. In addition, all the major wars and conflicts I mentioned a year ago are still with us, spurred on by the intergenerational transmission of triggering trauma. This is one justification for such reruns, which is to see any changes over the year(s), given our forgetting or suspect memory.

One conclusion may be that just like the past contributions to current individual conflict in our patients and the public, so does our social past influence our current national and international conflicts. It may take diplomatic processing of old, unresolved memories of social trauma to move further ahead in peace.

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 presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. 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.