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In war the enemy’s object is so to terrify you that you cannot think clearly, while your object is to continue to think clearly no matter how adverse or frightening the situation. The underlying idea is that thinking clearly is more conducive to being aware of “reality”, to assessing properly what is real. But being aware of reality may involve being aware of the unpleasant because reality is not necessarily pleasing or welcome. (Bion, “Making the Best of a Bad Job”)
The last Psychoanalytic Controversies section in this journal explored some of the contributions that psychoanalysts might make to thinking through the challenges that humanity faces today (Allison 2024). However, while some of the contributors (e.g. Frank 2024; Rustin 2024) touched on the exceptional challenge to our capacity to think represented by the situation that has developed in Gaza and its sequelae involving other groups across the Middle East following the events of 7 October 2023, this latest manifestation of the longstanding Israel–Palestine conflict was not the primary focus. This is because we came to realise that in order to have any chance at all of doing this particular topic justice, it would require its own space. We are taking the risk of approaching it in this current Controversy with considerable trepidation, mindful of the extraordinary intensity of the feelings that are stirred up both by our own and others’ efforts to engage with it. Many if not most psychoanalytic societies will have had painful recent experiences of this emotional turbulence and the polarisation it can generate. And yet looking away is not an option. Although he was not writing about the most recent developments in the Israel–Palestine conflict, Fakhry Davids captured the dilemma vividly in his reflections on another recent episode:
As the airwaves filled with sounds and images of that brutal war (Rothchild 2014) – of bombings and buildings being reduced to dust, of streets filled with the blood of the dead and