The first mass school shooting in the modern history of the United States occurred at the University of Texas at Austin on August 1, 1966. A 25‐year‐old student, Charles Whitman, went on a rampage that ultimately left 16 dead and 31 injured. With no prior models for how to respond, public discourse about the tragedy was squelched. Fifty years lapsed before a proper permanent memorial was dedicated – the same day that the Campus Carry gun law went into effect. This article explores the tragedy and its aftermath through the lens of history, rhetoric, sociology, and psychoanalysis. The silence and disavowal after the killings, the perception that Austin lost its innocence, feelings of helplessness and shame, more permissive gun laws, and even the counter‐culture's glorification of Whitman were symptomatic of collective trauma. In the years since the massacre, we learned that collective trauma requires witnessing, discourse, and memorialization for healing to occur.

This article illustrates how a patient's discussion of a dog can provide a rich entrée into that patient's psyche and inner object world. The author will review the psychoanalytic literature on the topic, present case material from 2 clients who displaced their issues onto dogs, and consider clinical techniques for addressing this. Given that human identifications with dogs occur in daily life, it is hardly surprising that dogs may serve as objects of identification, projection, and displacement in a client's psychoanalytic treatment. The most frequent means by which this occurs is through metaphor, as shown in a psychotherapy vignette from an adult male. His identification with a wounded dog led to revelations about his object relations, was enacted in his relationships and transference, and became an organizing metaphor in the treatment. In an analytic case, an adult anorexic woman's dog imagery evolved as she psychologically separated from her mother, "launched" her children, and claimed her own life and agency. She initially presented blurred boundaries and overidentification with her dog. The patient recognized her second dog as a separate object, but projected malevolent human intent onto it. Finally, she recognized that it was just acting like a dog, and she went on to develop expertise in training dogs. The author will explore both of the patients' defenses, displacements, transferences, and the interventions which helped in working through their issues.

For 17 years, I worked with adolescent male sexual perpetrators in residential treatment, where the predominant modality is cognitive-behavior therapy. Concurrently, I completed training to become a psychoanalyst, and began providing psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy to children and adults in my independent practice. I initially thought it coincidental that I started working with perpetrators and definitely considered the work a separate path in my professional development. This article will explore the development of my dual professional roles, how my psychoanalytic orientation informed my work with juvenile sexual perpetrators, and how my work with perpetrators both informed and collided with my private psychoanalytic practice. I will provide clinical illustrations, using pseudonyms for my clients and deidentifying and disguising their material, while retaining their dynamics and clinical process. I will share some of what I learned about them and, ultimately, some surprising things I learned about myself in the process. These insights were transformative in that they shed light on both my empathy and blind spots, helped me to understand my motivations to become a psychoanalyst and work with perpetrators, and propelled my psychological and professional development. It is hoped that these insights will be of assistance to other psychotherapists in their professional development.

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