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This paper explores several paradigmatic approaches to understanding the causes of the intractability of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It elaborates a perspective that illuminates how the traumatic histories of both peoples construct a victim state of mind, whose paranoid schizoid mechanisms are exacerbated by the ongoing traumatogenic environment of violence and war, thus foreclosing capacities for peacemaking. After critiquing the trauma paradigm's assumptions of psychological symmetry and shared responsibility for the conflict, the paper develops an alternative social psychoanalytic model that situates the unconscious processes produced by trauma within the specificities of history, large group identity, ideological hegemony and power hierarchies that shape the psychological experience of both peoples and account for the complex systemic asymmetries that impede the possibilities for a just reconciliation of their tragic conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article posits that social trauma is to be understood from a social psychoanalytic perspective that takes account of the complex interface and mutual impact of social forces and unconscious dynamics. Its argument, that politics and psychology are inevitably interwoven as the foundation of subjectivity, is explored through an autobiographical journey that inexorably took the author from political activism to psychoanalysis. The author's personal, professional and political encounter with the traumatogenic conditions of Latin American state terror, and her involvement in a progressive movement within psychoanalysis that aligns the profession with activist struggles on behalf of social justice, is proposed as a significant model for psychoanalysts in the Global North as well as the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the psychoanalytic view on the paradox of prejudice on the part of the U.S. as it created policies that favor Israel and the role of U.S. geopolitical interests in forming the nature of Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It emphasizes the importance of Israel to U.S. policies as the latter government fight against Arab nationalism that would pose a threat to its geopolitical interest and access to petroleum reserves. The author states the need to understand the role of the U.S. in the conflict within broader cultural matrix.

The author presents a psychoanalytic discourse on global warming and ecological destruction. She thinks that humans can suffer from many problematic aspects of social order without knowing the root of their discordant experience. She notes that humans defend themselves from anxiety and harsh reality by ignoring the threats to their existence. She expounds the concept of denial by referring to Sigmund Freud.

The paper consists of the online discussion of Nancy Hollander's ‘Psyche, Ideology, and the Creation of the Political Subject’, summarized. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper consists of a discussion of Neil Altman's ‘Psychoanalysis and war’, which was conducted online through PsyBC in the fall of 2006. Discussants were a group of psychoanalytically oriented thinkers chosen by the author and Nancy Hollander, the author of the other paper included in the discussion. The paper represents the full discussion with only minor edits to correct typographical errors and improve clarity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An account of the aims and genesis of Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics: Encounters in the Clinical Setting (Layton et al., 2006). The editors of the collection aim to convey a sense of what social and political concerns have shaped them as editors and why they were moved to produce the book. They each offer a personal piece that highlights particular themes in the book and in their lives as psychoanalyst-activists. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the emergence of psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires, Argentina. During the Spanish colonial period, Buenos Aires emerged as Latin America's most cosmopolitan capital dominated by the representatives of the country's oligarchy. By the turn of the twentieth century, most of the city's inhabitants were foreign-born. Its culture was textured by the immigrant experience. But a military coup in 1930 has made the politics in the presidential palace a blend of fascistic and anti-Semitic ideas. This forced the Argentine culture to adjust to the abrupt halt in the immense flow of immigration and foreign capital. Psychoanalysis made its appearance in Buenos Aires during these times. There had been an interest in psychology and psychoanalysis among social scientists and philosophers since the turn of the century, especially from 1923 on following the translation into Spanish of the complete works of Freud.

This paper shows how in an interdisciplinary context psychoanalysis can illuminate the interface between ideology and mental states that produces citizens' identification with repressive political trends. It argues for a socially conscious clinical psychoanalysis that includes an awareness of and respectful exploration of the social as well as the psychic origins of patients' deep anxieties and conflicts. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]