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First Posted on May 25, 2013 by alisonball with thanks to Ronit Bichler

Last weekend I participated in the annual Freud Conference organized by three psychotherapeutic bodies, the Australian Association of Group Psychotherapists, the Australian Psychoanalytical Society and the Victorian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists.
The two speakers were Dr Nancy Hollander, an American psychoanalyst and the Australian barrister Dr Julian Burnside.

The conference was deeply disturbing and thought provoking. The theme of the conference was the abuse of human rights.
Dr Hollander was talking about the abuse of human rights of the Latino and Latin American by the American government and Dr Burnside was talking about the abuse of human rights of the refugees, especially Boat People that come to Australia.

In both papers we were shown how governments are influenced by “groups with power” (economic, religious/moralistic, political) resulting in directing hostility, anger, fear and hate towards minority groups that are vulnerable.

There are various minority groups that have been targeted over the years in various countries- religious minorities, political minorities, racial minorities and the gay and lesbian minority group.

The conference made me think, for the umpteenth time, about the abuse of human rights of the gay and lesbian people that I am hearing of quite continually, in my work.

I am hearing of fears of being out casted, being stigmatized, not given equal career opportunities, not being able to marry and have children.
I am hearing of deep rooted shame of one’s own being that is different from the mainstream acceptable standards.
I am hearing about the need to hide one’s true self and living in a false way as being true to self is very risky.

And the lectures at the conference have again set me wondering whether society is evacuating its unconscious anger, hate, fear and hostility into the gay community, therefore ridding itself from knowing about the collective and individual sense of being different in some fundamental way.

Fear of being recognized as fundamentally different exacerbates fear of being attacked and persecuted, vomited out of the group. The society’s unconscious solution might be to join the forces of the individual’s fears and direct them into an existing group- the result being that this group is made to swallow what is unpalatable and undigested by that society.

Our society is made up of individuals- each one of us- and we must question our part in the whole. We, ourselves, could be perpetrators or take the role of bystander which was also a theme taken up by the speakers.