The Israeli Psychoanalytic Buddhist Project: An Ethical Psychoanalysis That Dares to Dream in a Land of Shattered Dreams

ABSTRACT

This article explores the Israeli project to integrate Buddhist principles and practices within psychoanalysis. The article’s focus is to view the Israeli project through a contextualist lens. Beginning with a concise summary of the project that highlights the unique and creative features of the Israelis’ understanding of non-dual states, the Israeli vision is then contextualized within their particular understanding of Kohut’s legacy. Following some cautionary statements about clinical applications with severely traumatized individuals, the article explores the tragic and trauma-informed historical/political context that gave rise to the particular vision of psychoanalysis the Israeli project hopes to bring forth. The project comes to be understood as a beginning micro-movement, a leading developmental edge within the deep despair and traumatic entrenchment of the collective Israeli psyche.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Details of the proposed institute are described in a monograph published by the Israel Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity and Lama Tzong Khapa Institute for the Study and Practice of Buddhism in the Tibetan Tradition. Psychoanalytic Self Psychology and Buddhism: Evolution and Preservation: Visionary Proposal Psychoanalytic-Buddhist Training.

² I had the opportunity to live out an Israeli/Palestinian mini version of King’s dream. On a visit to Israel in 2013 an Israeli Jewish tour guide took us to the home of his Arab Sufi friend in Nazareth where we were served a generous lunch. This Sufi family was descendants of “internal refugees.” In the war of 1948 the Sufi friend’s father and his family were expelled from their nearby village and fled to and settled in Nazareth, thereby qualifying as Israeli Arab citizens. It was the tour guide’s uncle who was the military commander who engineered the expulsion of his Sufi friend’s father in 1948!

³ When I use the term “collective Israeli psyche” I am of course referring to the collective Israeli Jewish psyche quite apart from Israeli Arab citizens who form 20% of the population.

⁴ Raanan Kulka, personal communication.

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Notes on contributors

Maxwell Sucharov

Maxwell Sucharov, M.D., is a psychoanalytic psychiatrist in private practice in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He is a Clinical Associate, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Council member for IAPSP, and is on the Editorial Board of Psychoanalysis Self and Context.