Awakening to Our Implicated Selves: Paralysis, Disorientation and What’s at Stake Psychically

Abstract

As we engage our histories of implication, are we underestimating our grasp of the treacherousness of this terrain? Can the experience of being an implicated-victim carrying genocidal trauma live with being an implicated-perpetrator? Can we hold this much reactivity and agony, and—if not – what does that suggest for how we maneuver? Are we de-centering empathy in this realm, as if empathy will impede upon our fight for justice? This article considers the emotional experience of the unwinding of collective identities and the shattering that ensues. It zeros in on paralysis and extreme disorientation as we awaken to our culpability, threatening capacities to self-regulate. It joins others seeking fluency with the layer of the psyche that absorbs the genocidal and working to grasp the inherent potential in these ruptures. The author draws from psychosocial and reconciliation projects at the trifecta of Israel/Palestine, diaspora Jewry, and German-Jewish re-engagement.

Keywords:

• complex implication
• genocidal trauma
• historical legacy
• collective identities
• Israel/Palestine
• Holocaust

Acknowledgments

With much gratitude to the Arbeitskreis Landsynagoge-Roth and Zochrot for many years of guidance; to Miko ZR and Tema ZR, Esther Rapoport, Rachael Peltz, Naama Hochstein, Lauren Levine, Jessica Benjamin, and Michal Seligman for critical feedback, questions, and resources; and to a reading group with Barbara Eisold, Kathy Bacon-Greenberg, Judith Rustin and Julia Shiang; and NYU Postdoctoral Program’s Project on Race in Clinical Space with Kathy Pogue White and Spyros Orfanos, who undoubtedly contributed to the questions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to Zochrot (2022), “The 1948 Palestinian exodus, also known as the Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, al-Nakbah, lit. “disaster,” “catastrophe,” or “cataclysm”), occurred when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Palestine war. The term nakba also refers to the period of war itself and events affecting Palestinians from December 1947 to January 1949.”

2 M. Zak, personal communication 12/2023.

3 https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/יורים_ובוכים; Retrieved August 13, 2023; https://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/10593/No-More-Shooting-and-Crying–Israeli-Soldiers-After-Their-Service.

4 See Ben-Yehuda (2023) https://www.haokets.org/2023/12/26/כיבוש-נושאת-המטוסים-שלי/Retrieved January 1, 2024.

5 I am grateful to Efrat Even-tzur (2023) for introducing the clinical need for our implication in social violence to “hover” in the therapeutic space. Our implication needs to be “held in mind” – mentalized – but by using the word “hover,” Even-tzur is bringing this attempt to hold into shared space.

6 Among such organizations are: Zochrot; Combatants for Peace; Standing Together/Omdim B’yachad; A Land for All; B’tselem.

7 D. Schwartz (2013) https://zochrot.org/en/press/56135.

8 Zochrot is an Israeli organization formed to raise awareness about the Palestinian Nakba with a view towards promoting accountability among the Jewish public of Israel and the implementation of the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees. For more information, see: https://www.zochrot.org/articles/view/56525/en?Who_Why_and_How.

9 Benjamin, J. personal communication, January 2024.

10 “Inhabiting implication” is the phrase Kabasakalian-McKay and Mark (2023) use and part of the title of their book. The word captures the bodily, full immersion, in the experience of awakening to our culpability.

11 See Zochrot (2015), Truth Commission, December 10, 2014 and Roth (2017) for an earlier discussion of the experimental truth commission and the “Jewish fighter” below.

12 E. Ziv (2023) makes the critical point that psychoanalysis has not learned how to listen to the necessary, disruptive rage inherent in social traumas.

13 Benjamin (2018) and Gobodo-Madikizeila (2016a) write extensively about the transformative power of acknowledgment of wrong-doing in restoring a belief in the potential for a lawful world.

14 Rachael Peltz, personal communication, September, 2023.

15 Guy Davidi’s (2022) film, Innocence, explores the cost for those for whom military inscription goes against their values, highlighting their voices through diary entries found after they suicided.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Judy Roth

Judy Roth, Ph.D., is Adjunct Associate Medical Professor, CUNY School of Medicine and Clinical Consultant for the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, City College. She is also Clinical Consultant at the Human Rights Work Group at NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Dr. Roth is co-chair of the Global Psychosocial Network https://globalpsychosocial.org, and co-guest editor for the forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology “Working in a sea of fire: Palestinian and Israeli mental health practitioners respond to the current moment.” She is in private practice in New York City.