Defending the indefensible
Preamble
This article was written shortly before the horrific bloodshed at the border of Gaza and Israel of May 14. Although it may seem ludicrous to write about empathy in the current context, Socio-Analytic Dialogue disagrees. What follows is not about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Rather, it focuses on one of its recent developments, Mahmoud Abbas’s declaration on the Holocaust, to illustrate what genuine empathic ability is and requires. It concludes with an example on France and its citizens who joined the Islamic State to illustrate that promoting empathic availability, a psychosocial policy, must be done in a general equilibrium, or systems dynamics, context.
Mahmoud Abbas and the Holocaust
Much has already been written about Mahmoud Abbas’ speech in front of the Palestinian National Congress in which he claimed that the Holocaust was the result of the Jews’ association with banking (a role historically forced upon them since financial activity, usury, was forbidden to Christians) rather than of the Nazi regime and its accomplices’ visceral hate of the Jewish people. In doing so, he not only displayed anti-Semitism in all of its ugliness but also blamed the victims for bringing on their mass slaughter upon themselves. Both assertions are quite reprehensible and were quickly met with sharp criticisms from the State of Israel and Western democracies, prompting in turn Mr. Abbas to offer an apology and Palestinian leaders, such as Saeb Erekat or Mahmoud al-Habbash, to attempt to soften what the leader of the Palestinian National Authority had expressed. To make matters worse, Mahmoud Abbas has sadly been no stranger to historical revisionism, be it regarding Jewish migration to Palestine, a near impossibility after 1939, or the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis.
However, the purpose of this article is not to add further fuel to the seemingly never-ending enactments of splitting and demonization social defenses often observed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, in the spirit of Socio-Analytic Dialogue’s emphasis on empathic availability and capability, our goal is to explore whether taking empathic availability to the frontier, a transgressive act to some, may have a salutary role in today’s psychosocial environment.
The Holocaust individually and collectively induces extremely intense feelings since it immediately recalls a trauma whose mourning remains elusive and which in the eyes of many has no equivalent in history. Raised in its shadow (i.e., second generation) in France, what was transmitted to me from the Holocaust defined at its core what I am and strove to be. In fact, “Understanding the Past; Creating the Future”, one of the main messages of Socio-Analytic Dialogue: Incorporating Psychosocial Dynamics into Public Policies and title of its concluding chapter was deliberately chosen to echo Yad Vashem’s theme of “Remembering the Past, Shaping the Future”.
Healing always require crossing seemingly irreconcilable divides. As a consequence, empathic availability should not constrained by boundaries Without belittling the importance of disavowing Mahmoud Abbas comments, the article suggests to break away from the us versus them splitting reactions that the majority of us are conditioned to expect in these situations. Thus, in a magnanimous gesture of empathic availability, Israel could treat the Palestinian Authority leader’s grotesque statement as an opportunity allowing both sides to internalize the psychosocial dynamics of the conflict.
Embracing empathic availability is not new, witness encounters in Colombia between former FARC guerillas or paramilitaries and victims and the Colombia Humana message of the presidential candidate and former Mayor of Bogota, Gustavo Petro. The courage and humanity that the encounters in Colombia required bring to my mind the ground breaking work of Dan Bar-On; the Israeli psychoanalyst and author of Legacy of Silence, whose work on intergenerational transfer of trauma and the Holocaust showcases his unique capacity for empathy with his willingness and ability to listen to the suffering of children of the Third Reich.
At times, a society’s predisposition towards collective empathic may not be forthcoming, perhaps because of history or geopolitical situation. However, approaching societal issues from a systems dynamics and psychosocial perspective in a rigorous and neutral manner, meaning understanding the nature and purpose of the social defenses as well as identifying the unconscious collusions, can set the stage for a society to embrace empathic availability and capability.
Encouraging positive identifications between groups that oppose, even demonize, one another is what set the stage for tolerance, compassion and empathy. Regardless of where or why they originate, psychosocial affects should not be dismissed. They have meaning. Understanding the psychic reality of each group, each group experiencing -as if it were its own- other groups’ psychic reality, is key to positive identifications; splitting likely to decrease, mental boundaries between groups prone to disappear.
Furthermore, the propensity for empathy at the level of an entire society increases with the awareness of the existence and extent of unconscious collusions. The latter are almost always certain to be present. Groups can find themselves acting unconsciously on behalf of other groups; introjection inducing them to act upon the role that other groups may have ‘assigned’ to them. Acknowledging unconscious collusions encourages a society’s reflectiveness; blame or guilt almost incompatible in a social system once outcomes, experienced as shared responsibilities, become collectively owned.
Undoubtedly, a large share of the psychosocial dynamics observed in Israel and the Palestinian territories are, at least partially, driven by unconscious collusions between the two groups. On both sides, demonization engenders extremism while extremism validates demonization.
Regardless of one’s views on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, it is difficult to dispute that Palestinians in their majority must have a deep yearning to return to a homeland whose loss has led to unfathomable feelings of victimhood. These are buttressed by how they experience their current situation; powerlessness, abandonment and despair, and the repeated re-experiencing “in the mind” of the Nakba, or catastrophe.
Victimhood, in spite of the highly asymmetric distribution of power between the two groups, is also present amongst the Israelis. To this day, it remains impossible to assess Israel’s unconscious dynamics without referring to the Holocaust as a starting point, Bar-On, for example, writing, “As an Israeli, I live in a victim’s culture. The Holocaust is still an open wound for the many people around me… We must be strong so that no one can do it to us again”. Schematically, this has resulted in a deeply felt annihilation anxiety (partly unconscious and defended against); annihilation buttressed by the engrained conviction that, whenever things go wrong in the world, Jews are likely to be singled as scapegoats. The collision of this national mindset with the country’s geography and today’s geopolitics, lays the foundation for what might be today the essence of the Israeli experience, that of a besieged individual, terrified of abandonment and annihilation, but determined against all odds to overcome the challenges. My participation to a Group Relations conference attended by a majority of Israelis confirmed this narrative, the fear of “being thrown back into the sea“ repeatedly brought up. The interactions that developed showed that what the Israelis were experiencing, recreating, and sharing with others could best be described as “a Start-Up company operating in a Shtetl”; the ghetto –internalized and transported across generations- still present in the mind.
Reflective societies: the royal road to empathy
But psychosocial affects, particularly traumas are rarely useful starting points. Whenever identity is under threat, groups in conflict with one another will each adhere rigidly to their own narrative while demonizing opposite groups and delegitimizing their struggle.
Instead, it is suggested to change the focus to reflectiveness. A reflective society internalizes how it functions as a social system as defenses against anxieties. Reflective citizens, therefore, become aware of the nature and purpose of the social defenses mobilized by different groups. Making sense of the psychosocial environment brings feelings of shared meaning. It can, as such, become a prelude to dialogue in situations where it is thought to be elusive. Humanizing all sides and their affects bridges irreconcilable divides and decreases the propensity for cycle of revenges by allowing a society to come to terms with psychosocial issues of biased mental representations, need for enemies, and demonization.
As such, our interest lies solely in the meaning of Mahmoud Abbas’ actions for the groups as a whole. In this context, regardless of the power that words violating the sanctity of the Holocaust may have, our personal reaction to them has to become, at least momentarily, irrelevant. In the absence of magical thinking or exhortation to violence (e.g., In Rwanda before the genocide), words, especially if they are –in displacement- expressing something else, are fundamentally devoid of power. They, therefore, cannot, at least in theory, prevent anyone from focusing empathically on what is being said and why. Psychosocial dynamics, for example attacks on group identity, lose their traction if they are analyzed and, as a consequence, distanced from. In a world of unconscious collusions, it is also legitimate to be willing to question other groups’ role behind the psychosocial dynamics that lead to enactments. Furthermore, this empathic questioning has to be undertaken with the utmost sincerity. Suspending disbelief, rather than reacting with horror to what has been said (or done), one could strive to focus immediately –through identification- on the psychosocial environment, in particular the suffering of the group, that may have led to the enactment. In this context, one can even pity Mahmoud Abbas who speaks on behalf of a victimized group and whose psychosocial state – as the successor of Yasser Arafat, he found himself unable as leader of the Palestinian Authority to deliver to his people what they were aspiring too- sadly led him to such a low point; his crude anti-Semitism the only way he could express himself on behalf of his people. Empathic availability suggests focusing on the group level meaning of Mahmoud Abbas' enactment and experiencing, as if they were our own, the underlying psychosocial dynamics.
Essentially Socio-Analytic Dialogue advocates the creation of a safe psychosocial space in which a group can ‘invite’ or authorize other groups to experience, as genuinely as it might be possible, its own trauma. In exchange, the group has to be willing to attempt to experience, as if it were its own, the traumas of the other groups. These psychosocial exchanges, each group ‘transporting’ itself -as if traveling on a psychosocial map- to another group’s psychic reality, are at the foundation of reflectiveness.
Although the asymmetric distribution of power between Israelis and Palestinians represent a significant hindrance to the kind of empathic exchanges recommended above, it does not –witness Mandela’s ability to see and convey to others how fearful whites in South Africa were also victims- preclude it. There are always specific psychosocial aspects that can be shared; these ‘entry points’ capable of allowing each group to begin experiencing, while suspending all judgments, the other’s anxieties, unbearable shame, or fears.
Thus, at the psychosocial level, Mahmoud Abbas’ statement on something that is so dear to the Jewish people could instead of being solely rebuffed also be used as an opportunity by the Israelis to audaciously display empathy precisely when it is thought to be impossible. It is for this very reason that a transgressive empathic response could potentially drastically alter the psychosocial dynamics.
The more challenging it becomes, the more a compassionate response from one group to another sets the stage for credibility. Israelis and Palestinians together could –through a rigorous understanding and internalization of the psychosocial dynamics of the conflict, chiefly the social defenses on both sides and the unconscious collusions- take steps together towards a shared journey into empathic availability and capability.
L’empathie sera convulsive ou ne sera pas
Following years of focusing on the impact of often-regressed psychosocial dynamics on public policy, my interest shifted towards the promotion of empathic availability and capability as a way to decrease the propensity of societies to regress into predictable patterns of violence. Although Socio-Analytic Dialogue as well as my own background prepared me for this, the blog focuses on ways in which a society can become empathic regardless; understanding and internalizing psychosocial dynamics key to the promotion of empathic availability and capability.
Thus, while I might have inherited the sorrow of the Holocaust, I also learned to feel the pain inflicted on Dresden or during the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Third Reich. Working with Tunisian psychoanalysts and social workers on extremism, I experienced, as could have been expected, how the majority of youngsters drawn to violent narratives despised what I represented to them. And yet despite this, a fruitful dialogue occurred -willingness and ability to tolerate affects a prerequisite- and positive identifications emerged. While I was able to capture the anger, as well as the (denied) gratitude, that a teenager unable to leave Tunisia for Syria felt for his mother who had ‘robbed’ him of a chance at martyrdom, he was ultimately also able to identify with my appreciation and respect for the beauty and sanctity of life. Incidentally, our condemnations of perverse societal dynamics were fundamentally not that different from one another and, as such, reduced the splitting between us that could have existed otherwise. Upon the election of President Trump, although I felt that it would damage psychosocial dynamics in the United States, I nevertheless publicly advocated for a compassionate and identification driven overture towards his voters; a stance I had to muster the courage to adopt as I sadly anticipated that it would be disavowed in near unanimity by those who had not voted for him. On one of the ugliest forms of extremism in the United States, alt-right demonstrators in Charlottesville, I still unequivocally felt that empathy towards publicly outed participants, who had lost their jobs or had to move, was warranted. Empathy does not in anyway validate a behavior or an idea; it only strives to maintain humanity in all circumstances, feelings of victimhood occurring in many different situations. My reaction to testimonies of former detainees at Guantanamo, under the assumption that there were truthful, elicited similar reactions. Going even further, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights organized a meeting in Paris between Mourad Benchellali, a former detainee, and high level ranking US officials involved in the War on Terror. It illustrates poignantly well the power of empathic dialogue; the public meeting in Paris concluding with Janis Karpinski, who commanded the forces that operated the prison of Abu Ghraib during the time of the abuses, asking forgiveness and hugging Ali Al Kaissi, one of the photo symbols of the horrors of Abu Ghraib. It is Ali, the victim, who had requested Mourad to introduce him to her. Last I was moved by the televised trial of Melina Bougedir in Baghdad, to which we now turn.
Empathic availability, a psychosocial policy, from a systems perspective
Melina Bougedir and Djamila Boutoutaou are, so far, the only two young French women that joined the Islamic State and were tried in Baghdad (there are, however, many more foreign women in the same situation, some already sentenced to death or life imprisonment). Although they may not be innocent and gullible women forced to follow their husband, some of these foreign women as radicalized as their male counterparts, they are nevertheless unlikely to have committed atrocities and, regardless, should be given the protection offered by the French state to its citizens. Instead, they are, in a move reminiscent of the debate on déchéance de nationalité, purposely not allowed to return. Denying that terrorism also comes from within reflects in France (as a social system) a narcissistic defense whereas a ‘bad’ part of society is simply split off. Although this may be understandable in a country traumatized by repeated acts of terrorism, the total absence of empathy and, as a consequence, individuals becoming des déchets, or trash, accomplishes nothing for the victims of the Bataclan or for someone like, Xavier Jugelé, the police captain killed on the Champs Elysées in 2017.
Promoting empathic availability and capability is a psychosocial policy. As such, like any other policies, for example in economics, it can only be formulated and sequenced in a general equilibrium context; what is referred to as systems dynamics in Socio-Analytic Dialogue. In spite of its innovative spirit and ongoing significant contributions to the world’s wellbeing, France is beset by angst and a sense of doom; shared affects that are also reflected at the micro level by a high yet often-unacknowledged level of aggression within the society. While the repeated strikes observed in so many sectors of the economy are in response to perceptions of lack of fairness in the economic system’s allocation of burden sharing, they are also a reflection of poor Objet Relationships at the level of the entire society; suspending essential public services rendering, at least in the eyes of the strikers, hurting others acceptable. In such a psychosocial environment, promoting empathic availability through identification can only improve Object Relationships. Thus, although societal level empathy towards women jihadists has seemingly nothing to do with the overall psychosocial environment in France, hence it economy; it could in fact (again thinking from a systems dynamics perspective) go a long way towards improving citizens’ respect for one another. Once certain groups, no matter how ‘undesirable’ are rejected, the door is open to contemptuous (e.g., narcissistic) relationships to others or tasks (e.g., work responsibilities). Failing to treat psychosocial issues on par with other social issues (e.g., economics, environment, security) and/or failing to address them from a systems dynamics perspective are public policy errors that can be costly to a society.