This paper considers situations of destruction and hopelessness in which thought loses its capacity to move and the world divides into the stark positions of destroy or be destroyed. Drawing on Dana Amir’s work on hermetic narrative and forgiveness, it examines how traumatic experience may become sealed within absolute forms that resist ambiguity, relation, and change. The idea of a hospitable enclave refers to a psychic, interpersonal, or aesthetic space in which thought can remain alive without resolving what has happened. Read alongside Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s middle range of agency, the enclave marks a fragile movement within what cannot be repaired, where the event continues to shape psychic life without occupying the whole field. The paper also considers how aesthetic objects and poetic address may sustain an internal witness, preserving memory, temporality, and the capacity to think when hope has become difficult to imagine. A hospitable enclave does not undo what has happened. It keeps open the possibility that thought may return.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this presentation participants will be able:

1. Describe how hermetic narratives preserve traumatic experience in absolute forms that arrest psychic and relational movement.
2. Distinguish forgiveness as a middle range of agency from pardon, reconciliation, or the erasure of irreparable harm.
3. Analyze how aesthetic objects and poetic address may sustain an internal witness, restoring temporality and the capacity to think in situations of destruction and hopelessness.

Oren Gozlan, CPsych, ABPP, FIPA

Oren Gozlan, CPsych, ABPP, FIPA, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in Toronto. He is a member of the Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) His book Transsexuality and the Art of Transitioning: A Lacanian Approach won the American Academy & Board of Psychoanalysis annual book prize for books published in 2015. He is also the winner of the Symonds Prize (2016), Ralph Roughton Award (2022) and the Miguel Prados Prize (2023). His edited collection titled: “Critical Debates in the Transsexual Studies Field: In Transition” (Routledge) was a runner-up for the 2019 Gradiva Award. His recently published books are Gender with Sexuality; situations of psychoanalytic learning (Routledge 2025) and Gender: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge 2026)