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Dear Editor,
Donald Moss criticizes my use of the first-person singular voice, denouncing it in harsh terms as tyrannical and exclusionary, and as disallowing “otherness” or alternative voices. He has framed his argument in such a way – “epistemologically airtight”, to use his own phrase – that any objection I might raise is presumed to confirm his point. This rhetorical configuration is clever, but it constitutes a distortion: of my original text, of reality, and even of psychoanalytic thought.
First, Moss appears to prefer that I speak in the first-person plural, from within some imagined collective “we”. But by what authority would I be entitled to do so? I cannot speak on behalf of all Israelis, Palestinians, or even psychoanalysts. The invitation to participate in this controversial discussion was clearly addressed to me as an individual, to offer my views, opinions, and insights. Moss is entitled to disagree with those views, but not to invalidate my right to express them by labelling my voice as tyrannical. Ironically, it is Moss who adopts an authoritative (or in his term, tyrannical) tone, beginning his response with “We psychoanalysts”, as if to speak for an undifferentiated collective. In my experience, psychoanalysts are deeply individualistic and often resistant to claims of consensus. Moss's position here risks enacting precisely the exclusionary gesture he attributes to me.
Moss also takes issue with my use of the word “testimony”, linking it to Holocaust survivors and questioning its appropriateness in psychoanalytic discourse. He compares it unfavourably with clinical memory, asking whether patients give us “testimonies” or “memories”. This comparison is not only misleading but also rhetorically manipulative. We are not in the realm of free association or “working through” unconscious material. The events I refer to – bombings, massacres, rocket attacks – are not fantasies but harsh and persistent realities. To describe such experiences from a personal