We are living in an ongoing extreme reality. Almost two years have passed since the October 7th massacre, the hostages are still in life-threatening danger and indescribable suffering, and the war of annihilation continues to this very moment. In our name, atrocities of starvation, killing, attacks on hospitals, displacement, and destruction are taking place in Gaza. The terrible violence within which we exist leads to a constant sense of insecurity, hypervigilance, and anxiety, and deeply damages the quality of life for all of us.
Within this shared reality, “the wall has fallen”: the external, extreme, and violent reality has penetrated every space and affects each and every one of us – therapists and patients alike. The concept of the falling wall is primarily known in the context of situations of danger, which evoke experiences of vulnerability and anxiety shared by both sides of the therapeutic relationship. But the aggression in which we are all involved in various ways also creates a fracture in the treatment room – bringing down the wall. The extreme violence we are all immersed in, whether through acknowledgment, denial, resistance, or silencing, also creates additional shared psychological states that we experience and witness, such as the increase of split and dichotomous perceptions, and a regression to simplistic thinking, without observing the broader socio-political context. These lead to radicalization and escalation to the point of dehumanizing the “other.”
As mental health and welfare professionals, the responsibility rests on our shoulders not to ignore such an extreme reality of an attack on humanity, to step out of the neutral and classic stance in the public sphere, and to act to save humanity from collapse. We must clarify the broad contexts of the ongoing killing and annihilation in our name; we must uphold morality, cry out for the marginalized and silenced, and warn of a further collapse – not only of the victims but also of the annihilating society.
For many years, we were educated, as part of our therapeutic professionalization, to maintain anonymity in the public sphere, and neutrality in the therapeutic encounter. To be a “blank slate” onto which the internal world can be projected. In our understanding, in these extreme times, ignoring reality, socio-political contexts – and the historical context of occupation and discrimination – is a disconnected individualistic act.
We must ask ourselves whether our ethics, and the humanity within us, permit us a behavior which in fact, is also silence, enabling dehumanization and the normalization of an abnormal reality.
We ask how one can speak of symbolic nourishment and internalization – and at the same time be silent partners to the starvation of two million people as an act of revenge. How can we speak of empathy, when the killing of more than 18,000 children in Gaza is explained as the “price of the war on terror.” How can we continue to pride ourselves on “professionalism” in the treatment rooms, while in the public sphere we remain silent in the face of ongoing abuse, oppression, humiliation, and the killing of thousands of people for nearly two years?
It is our duty to rise up, to shout, and to demand a safe and respectful life for every human being wherever they may be. It is our duty to help patients in states of collapse – and also to help a society that is in a state of total collapse. We are at a historic and critical moment, and it is our duty to make heard the voice that fights for humanity and believes in the possibility of rehabilitating it. This call may sound, as we have heard more than once, as offensive or narrowing the space – because it carries a clear position. But in our eyes, public work outside the treatment rooms is a vital and moral action, aimed at benefiting the people living in this space.
This call stems from an insistence on saving humanity, and on preserving the values of dignity and personal security for each and every one. The ongoing violence, the bombardments, the starvation, the destruction, and the expulsion, are destroying not only life in Gaza but also our own humanity. We are here to remind of this, just as Winnicott reminded those present during the Controversial Discussions in the British Psychoanalytical Society to seek shelter, because “they are bombing outside.”