Fear and Shame in an Israeli Psychoanalyst and His Patient: Lessons Learned in Times of War

Living in the midst of a war presents unique challenges to ongoing psychotherapeutic treatment. This paper focuses on the ever-present threat of fracture to the analytic frame and the limited ability of the therapist to create a safe, insulated environment— a reliable container—in which to work, while coping with a violent external reality. Using an intrapsychic lens, as well as an interpersonal one, the dynamics of both the analyst's and the patient's fear and shame are brought into focus. This delicate balance is illustrated through two cases: one occurring during the First Gulf War (1991) and the second taking place during the Second Lebanon War (2006). In both cases, fear and shame cause a stalemate in the psychotherapeutic process. The analyst recalls his active duty as a soldier during the Yom Kippur War (1973). These memories and their attendant acknowledgement of fear and shame by the analyst, as well as his analysand's “supervisory” comments, gradually dissolve the knot and repair the rupture in the analytic process. The ability to fully experience fear, shame, and helplessness is at the core of psychic health, a health once destroyed by dissociation and denial of these feelings. This ability to experience fear and shame is the psyche's antidote to mental breakdown. Following discussion of the two case studies, this paper seeks to illustrate how the very structure of a society, in this case Israel, can codify societal defense mechanisms against emotions like fear and shame, exacerbating the very problems it seeks to assuage.