Faculty Writing: On Being Alone in Sweden and America’s Autoimmune Syndrome

Christine Smallwood wrote “Where the Swedes Go to Be (Really) Alone” for the New York Times, a short piece on Sweden and solitude.

Matthew Steinfeld  co-authored America’s Autoimmune Syndrome: How Failures in Slef-Recognition Contribute to the Perception of Threat for thePsychoanalytic Activist, an article in which the authors perform a psychoanalytic reading of the current American political climate. 

“America is and always has been incredibly complex. Built into its very foundation, inextricably intertwined – in tension – in perpetuity – irreconcilably, are the histories of privilege and subjugation. It is at once a place where refugees from around the world have found safe haven and new futures, and at the same time, it is a land where slavery and indigenous genocide were formative national activities. Until America is able to recognize this interdependent complexity, and therein, take responsibility for its own failures in self-recognition (that American privilege is bound up in the lack thereof) in a manner that is experienced as reparative, this syndrome will continue to manifest in different forms.”