From someone who watched both planes fly into the World Trade Center:
"On my return to New York, my plane flew over the World Trade site. It all came rushing back. I thought I had put the images into the background of my mind. I was wrong. It was right there as if it were 9/11 again. I can still see those planes. I can still see those people falling. . .Downtown is over. The life has gone from it. People walk around, but our neighborhood, our community, is gone forever. I'm terrified for New York. I think something really bad is going to happen. I've been in mourning for so long. I have been saying goodbye to my city for the past year."
From someone who came into treatment soon after 9/11:
"I can't ride my bike or run downtown anymore. I used to have a route. I knew every inch of the area. It's all over. My children seem to be so much more resilient. They don't have the memory. They can meet with their friends and just go on. I go on too, but it's not easy the way it was before. A certain sense of joy is gone, I believe forever."
From someone who came into treatment one year after 9/11:
"I walked by the site on my way to work. It is still incomprehensible that this could have happened. There is such a feeling of unreality about it. Every day, when I look out the window, I am confronted with a reality I don't want to know. Our family life was shattered. I'm still numb. I hope you can help me find a way to feel something."
From a friend who lived downtown:
"I think of the smells - the smells, the smoke - debris, death and decay. I'll never forget the smells."
Reaction - February 2003
Every day there is more scary news. The hospitals in New York are preparing antidotes for cyanide poison. Once again people are afraid to ride the subways, particularly in rush hour. Those driving into the city wait for hours as the bridges and tunnels have checkpoints and traffic is backed up for many miles.
Yesterday was a patient's birthday. She moaned, "I suspect it may be my last." Once again she was traumatized, convinced of an imminent terrorist attack. With a friend away, she thought of moving uptown, but then worried about being close to a nuclear plant. Another woman was concerned about sending her son to Hebrew School. Jewish businesses and synagogues are targets, we are told.
I have been checking with my colleagues around town to see what's happening in their practices. Several analysts told me a short time ago that 9/11 and its aftermath had, by-and-large, disappeared from session content. Surprised by that I asked others. I was told that people are terribly concerned about the upcoming war. In practices where patients suffered displacement, loss of family members, loss of jobs, and severe trauma, anxiety and fear is, understandably, more palpable, more immediate.
I understand that the hardware stores are doing a lively business in flashlights, duct tape, and batteries for radios. It has been suggested that a three day supply of water and food should be stocked. It reminds me of the days in Hawaii after December 7, 1941, when houses had to be blacked out. If lights were visible, doors were knocked on and the problem was eliminated. I carried a gasmask to school. Could that happen here?
Shortly after writing the last paragraph I heard from Deborah Siegel, Allen Siegel's daughter. She wrote, "Eighteen months ago I bought Cipro. Yesterday, I bought potassium iodide from drugstore.com (the NYC pharmacies are sold out). Everyone I know is getting these totemic pills. Buying them seems to soothe our fear. My husband and I have talked about a contingency plan. In the event of some unnamable calamity, we would meet at the apartment, then hitch or walk to the George Washington Bridge, and get as far out of town as we could. On my To-Do List for tomorrow: buy a transister radio, pack a backpack with a change of clothing. Anticipating the unconscionable, I go about these tasks with a surprising-to-me composure. What else is there to do?"
When I asked people who lived through the holocaust if they felt vulnerable and frightened now, several said, "No". Their concern was for their children who now have to have to face uncertainty. One survivor said, "I think of a book by Sinclair Lewis called, 'It Can't Happen Here.' But it did, just as it did in Nazi Germany. One can know something happened and still not know it. I know it happened here, but still I think somehow it can't happen here, again. We aren't behaving as if it could happen again. We still live in downtown New York. We haven't moved out of New York."
Is it odd that one article in the paper refers to the Orange Alert and what to do or not do about it and while next to that article is a story saying that Annika Sorenstam is going to play in a golf tournament with the men in March? On another page articles about huge plans for the West Side expansion abut stories about the demise of the arts due to severe financial shortfalls. And then, of course, every night of the week we can attend a psychoanalytic meeting and argue about the many analytic issues of the day. The juxtaposition of events and the contexts that shift from moment to moment leaves me breathless. It's tempting to watch mindless TV and then go to sleep. Is sleep possible?
