This chapter moves beyond a captivity scholarship based almost entirely on the experiences of White or White-descent captives and their Indian captors to study an account of nineteenth-century borderland captivity in the US Southwest, where – contrary to what the plethora of Anglo captivity scholarship indicates – most captives were of Mexican and/or Indigenous descent. To do so, I read Mary Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and the Goodness of God (1682) alongside María Ruiz de Burton’s Who Would’ve Thought It? (1872). This Mexican-American historical romance novel and, I would add, fictionalization of an Indian captivity narrative, retells the history of Mexican dispossession at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War through fictional Mohave captive and emerging Mexican American elite, Lola Medina. Within a broader rethinking of the captivity narrative genre, I argue that captivity narratives helped produced proto-Latinx subjects as racially discrete individuals, even while the factual condition of nineteenth-century captivity forced individuals of Latin-American descent into ambiguous relation with other racialized communities.

Though a moral psychology of guilt and taking responsibility is central to moving beyond violation, we must also understand denial as a moral psychological phenomenon. This may be straightforwardly ethical in its form or may disclose an underlying metapsychology of what Freud called disavowal. This chapter considers Stanley Cohen’s investigation of these terms in his pathbreaking States of Denial (2001). Cohen supported but was also deeply ambivalent about Freud’s account. He questioned the relationship between the unconscious and responsibility, the possibility for dissembling and the importance of psychological over sociological determinants of action. I defend an account of psychological denial or disavowal by addressing these concerns. The analysis is then applied to Joshua Oppenheimer’s film The Act of Killing (2014) concerning guilt and denial among perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide (1965-6). At home, these men are treated as celebrities, their actions unquestioned. The opportunity to make a film of their past as they wish challenges denial and brings out guilt feelings which are expressed morally, psychologically and physiologically. The film’s method is viewed as a form of psychoanalytic encounter providing a transitional space (Winnicott) to deal with guilt. It reveals the capacity for guilt even when it is socially denied in an unusual form of transitional justice.

This chapter, written for those who work with children and adolescents, summarizes, explains and extends psychoanalytic thinking about young people and climate change. Ambivalence, disavowal, grief, unconscious societal pressures, feelings of betrayal, regression to immature defenses, and interaction of climate concerns with other developmental issues are explored, applying the developmental frameworks of Melanie Klein, Erik Erikson, and Wilfred Bion. Climate change implications within each Eriksonian stage of psychosocial development through young adulthood are described. Specific recommendations are made to promote healthy attachment to the natural world, valuable versions of hope, and alignment with values. The importance of being a “good-enough” “flexible container” in relation to young people is emphasized. Particular considerations in addressing climate change issues with young children and with adolescents are detailed.

The origins and course of the Anglo-Zulu War and the death of the Prince Imperial; India as a model for a confederated South Africa; the course of the Second Anglo-Afghan War; Gladstone and the Midlothian campaign; the British disavowal of imperialism.