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Since we publish papers in the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies based on date of acceptance, it is remarkable that the three papers published in this issue happen to reflect a common theme: how society and the individual respond to their shared problems (Semetsky), ethnic groups and their problems (Strenger), and the weak, dying, disabled, and chronically ill (Kellehear) and the various problems created by their presence within the social system. One of us (SWT) recently participated in a panel at the American Psychoanalytic Association to discuss the social face of shame and humiliation. Carlo Strenger was a panelist along with Elizabeth Young-Breuhl and Donald Moss. The chair, Ben Kilborne, described the impact of shame and humiliation as creating a shame-rage or shame-guilt spiral, and that both postures inhibit the capacity for symbol formation or mentalization and can thus contribute to destructive acting out. This panel, and these papers, explore how destructive consequences can be avoided in various social contexts.
Carlo Strenger, a Swiss-born Israeli analyst, describes how shame and humiliation has been transmitted from generation to generation among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in Israel, and how that process has affected political and social processes, with complex and harmful consequences. In his paper in this issue of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytical Studies, Strenger hypothesizes that European immigrants to Israel, vowing never to experience this kind of humiliation again, were nonetheless unable to integrate this shameful self-image and instead repressed it into the psychological opposite, powerful “New Jews,” who were tough, fearless, and able to fight to defend themselves, exemplified in the current Jewish leadership.
Strenger concludes that a dialog between the “Old Jew” and “New Jew” must begin as a prerequisite to healing the rifts within Israeli society, and for arriving at a livable solution to the conf