Reflections on Learning from the Germans: What can Germany’s reckoning with the Holocaust teach us about racial reckoning in the United States?

While many of us understand and work with processes of repair and reconciliation in the clinical setting, few of us have experience with what repair for harmful behavior looks like for a country. How does a country recover from what Robert J. Lifton has called malignant normality? In this talk, I propose and explain that racism in the United States is a prime example of malignant normality and I explore the challenges of recovering from that widely shared cultural condition and shared state of mind. I will tell the story of Germany’s historical process of moving out of malignant normality towards repentance and reconciliation, through slides and narrative. I will also tell the story of our American challenge with the malignant normality of racism, what kind of progress is happening, and why our challenge is very different from Germany’s —more difficult.  We will have time to discuss together, thoughts and questions that come up in relation to the talk and to also reflect on why our conversation may be important for our work clinically.