But it emphasises also the limit of empathy, explaining why both the wounds of our past and their enactments in the present will continue to haunt us. The affective tone that must colour our strivings, therefore, is neither untrammelled optimism nor hopeless despair: it involves, instead, a tempered liminal space in which we, as citizens, commit ourselves to an unfolding process of searching for moments of meeting where recognition of our shared humanity becomes possible.

But the basic point is this: the intersubjective cultivation of hope - in the absence of actual material prospects - amounts to little more than another cheap kumbaya moment for the masses. Hope cannot exist within a psychological matrix of shame, envy and impasse while a material base marked by rampant inequality remains locked in place. As for the observable correlates of everyday violence, ressentiment-driven value delusions and alienated consumerism, these should remind us that nothing less than our shared humanity is at stake.

To foster an intersubjective milieu that both recognises and honours the inherent sociality of human beings is no simple feat, especially in violent societies where projection and withdrawal are the common psychological responses to perceptions of threat. Add to this mix the phenomenology of alienation - and a difficult task becomes a seemingly insurmountable one. Psychoanalyst Nina Coltart had something interesting to say about this, namely, the person who is interested only in getting better: “Psychoanalytical therapy has nothing to offer a patient who only wishes to be relieved of his suffering.

And yet this enduring struggle to re-cognise one another should not be seen as doomed to hopeless failure: this is because our earnest striving for mutuality is not a promised land but a process evolving all the time. The task before us is a daunting one - first creating and then immersing ourselves in a stream of openings for psychotic recognition, all the while appreciating that each of us is a moving target, different each time at the moment of being found.

The only certainty, to restate Baldwin, is that nothing can be changed if it is not confronted. By showing up and not retreating, by engaging and not dissociating, by searching for and not giving up on one another, we give ourselves and the generations to come the best chance of living with - instead of being lived by - our trauma. History cannot be overcome but, instead of carrying it on our backs, labouring under it, we can learn to walk beside it.