Doing Well: The Wellbeing Science Insights Podcast · Life Management Science Labs

Molly Castelloe, Ph.D.: The Importance of Good Leadership in Times of Crisis | Doing Well #84

·55 min·3 clips

Milosevic used the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo to call up a collective trauma.

1. Doing Well: The Wellbeing Science Insights Podcast centers this episode on good leadership in times of crisis and the work of Molly Castelloe, PhD. 2. Molly Castelloe is a filmmaker, psychoanalyst, and documentary director, and her film Blind Trust focuses on Vamik Volkan, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst from Cyprus. 3. The episode asks what leadership should do when a group is fragmented, traumatized, or pulled toward conflict. 4. Castelloe explains that Cyprus has been divided since the 1960s, with Cypriot Turks in the north and Greeks in the south. 5. She says Volkan grew up amid warfare between the two ethnic groups and later studied psychiatry in Ankara, Turkey. 6. She recounts a turning point in Volkan’s life: his roommate was shot seven times and killed in a pharmacy on the streets of Nicosia. 7. She connects that killing to Volkan’s thinking about large group psychology, because the roommate died as a member of an enemy group, not as an individual. 8. Castelloe also describes Volkan’s influence from Anwar Sadat’s 1979 speech at the Knesset in Jerusalem, where Sadat said the main Arab-Israeli problem was a psychological wall. 9. She says Volkan later worked with the American Committee on Foreign Affairs and the American Psychoanalytic Association to bring Israeli and Palestinian representatives together for dialogue. 10. She adds that he spent 40 years bringing representatives of enemy groups together in war zones, refugee camps, and other traumatized areas. 11. Castelloe defines large group identity as a shared culture, dances, food, fairy tales, and especially history. 12. She says people protect that identity strongly when borders are crossed and when nation-states feel threatened by outsiders. 13. Robert J. Lifton’s Surviving Our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the COVID-19 Pandemic gives her another frame for thinking about shared trauma. 14. She highlights Lifton’s argument that survivors are not just victims, because they develop special knowledge through the work of making meaning after catastrophe. 15. She says trauma can shut down the mind, making it hard to integrate experience for both individuals and groups. 16. She also says unresolved trauma can be passed from adults to children through stories, secrets, and unconscious cues. 17. When the episode turns to leadership, Castelloe names Nelson Mandela as a model who could listen to two sides and help a nation come together symbolically. 18. She contrasts that with Slobodan Milošević’s speech at the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, which she describes as a call-up of collective trauma and chosen trauma. 19. The interview style is reflective and explanatory, with Lumo asking follow-up questions that let Castelloe move between biography, theory, and practical leadership advice. 20. People interested in psychoanalysis, group psychology, trauma, and political leadership will get the most from it, while listeners wanting a light or fast-moving conversation may skip it.

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