How to Recognize a Chosen Trauma

Abby and Patrick bring a psychoanalytic lens to bear on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. As they explain, psychoanalysis offers tools for thinking both about specific political conditions and historical events and for reflecting more generally on the ways dramatic events can function politically and become “history” in the first place. Moreover, psychoanalytic concepts can bring together the perspectives of political economy, libidinal economy, and our own personal experiences to help us navigate overwhelming events and better track what’s new, what isn’t, what we need to remember, and what we’re encouraged to forget. To that end, Abby and Patrick take up psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan’s notion of the “chosen trauma,” a model for how episodes of mass trauma can become touchstones for defining group identity, and apply it to the events of 9/11, the “Global War on Terror” that ensued, and their ongoing legacy in our present. Toggling between artifacts of popular culture, military history, journalistic accounts, and more, Abby and Patrick reflect on how American society reacted to the trauma of 9/11; how political elites capitalized on the situation; how ideas of exceptionalism, innocence, vengeance, and even time and causality themselves were reconfigured; and how we’re still contending with the cultural and institutional consequences of those processes in the present.
Note: It has come to our attention that Dick Cheney is, in fact, currently dead, at least for now.

Texts cited include:

Patrick Blanchfield and Evan Simko-Bednarski, “Brave Moles and Hungry Ghosts” in The Revealer (September 2016) https://therevealer.org/brave-moles-and-hungry-ghosts-911-memento-mori/

Evan Simko-Bednarski, “Memento Mori,” https://www.simkobednarskiphoto.com/memento-mori

Vamik Volkan, “Transgenerational Transmissions and Chosen Traumas: An Aspect of Large-Group Identity, in Group Analysis (March 2001) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/05333160122077730

Andrew Bacevich, America's War for the Greater Middle East (2016)
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/241154/americas-war-for-the-greater-middle-east-by-andrew-j-bacevich/

Andrew Bacevich, “What I Learned After the End of History” (2025) https://www.juancole.com/2025/01/learned-after-history.html

Spencer Ackerman, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Donald Trump (2022) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622555/reign-of-terror-by-spencer-ackerman/

Spencer Ackerman (interviewed by Jordan Uhl) “"Terrorist": How ICE Weaponized 9/11's Scarlet Letter” in The Intercept Briefing https://theintercept.com/2026/02/06/spencer-ackerman-9-11-terrorists-ice/

Susan Sontag (et al), “Tuesday and After” in The New Yorker (September 16, 2001) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/09/24/tuesday-and-after-talk-of-the-town

Jake Tapper and Bill Maher, “Bill Maher: The Salon Interview” (December 2002) https://www.salon.com/2002/12/11/maher_6/

The Brown University Watson School of International and Public Affairs' Costs of War Project
https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/

Elizabeth Beavers, “Terrorizing Migrants: Five Ways Post 9/11 Legal Precedents Paved the Way for Anti-Immigrant Actions in the United States” https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/paper/terrorizingmigrants

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