The presentation by psychiatrist Dr. Vamik Volkan will start with the story of a very rich man who would machinegun a herd of deer from a helicopter when facing an anxiety-provoking event. How the task of becoming an animal killer was transmitted to him during his childhood from a stepfather will be illustrated. The presentation will focus on large groups, thousands or millions of people who share the same ethnic, national, religious, or ideological identity and sentiments. Each large group has its own language, nursery rhymes, history and cultural symbols. “Chosen trauma” as a large-group identity marker will be described. This term refers to the shared mental image of an event in a large group’s history in which the group suffered a catastrophic loss, humiliation, and helplessness at the hands of enemies or opponents. The chosen trauma is transmitted from one generation to the next one throughout many decades even centuries. Some political and social leaders may inflame a chosen trauma in order to fuel an entitlement ideology; a shared sense of entitlement to recover what was lost in reality and fantasy during the ancestors’ collective trauma and during other shared traumas. Such inflammations create problems in world diplomacy as well as in peaceful co-existence between divided sections within the same country.

Vamık D. Volkan, M.D., DFLAPA, FACPsa, is a Turkish Cypriot psychiatrist, internationally known for his 40 years of work bringing together conflictual groups for dialogue and mutual understanding. Among his many other honors, he is the president emeritus of the International Dialogue Initiative, among many other honors.