“Freud was very interested to bear of an account Dr. Chaim Weizmann had given me of the great interest in psychoanalysis in Palestine. He had told me that immigrants from Galicia arrived there with no clothes, but with copies of the Kapital and Die Traumdeutung under their arms.” (E. Jones: The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 3, p. 30, Basic Books, Inc., N.Y., 1957)
When Max Eitingon, one of Freud's earliest and most loyal followers, visited Palestine in 1910, there were no proper psychiatric facilities, and conditions were certainly not conducive to psychoanalytic activity. But the situation changed after the establishment of the British Mandate, one of the results of World War I. A British Zionist delegation arrived in 1918 in order to investigate the possibilities of implementing the Balfour Declaration (1917), which provided the basis for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Among its members was D. Eder, one of the founders of the British Psychoanalytical Society and its first Secretary. He became active psychoanalytically after the arrival of D. Feigenbaum from Vienna in 1920. Together they organized study groups for the discussion of psychoanalytic theories. The participants were mainly teachers and educators, who were later to play an important role in building up the country's educational system.
D. Eder left Palestine in 1922 and D. Feigenbaum in 1924, the latter because he had not found a suitable field for his work in the still undeveloped country, and because the management of the only psychiatric institution showed no understanding of his innovative ideas. But the influence of psychoanalysis on the social, cultural and medical life of the country only seemingly ended at this stage. In the twenties, collective settlements came into being, whose pioneers came from the Zionist youth movements in Europe, motivated not only by socialist, but also by psychoanalytic ideas.
One of the basic principles of the educational system in these new kibbutz settlements demanded the application to education of psychoanalytic findings on mental development. The Kibbutzim require the creation of an environment in nurseries and children's homes which answers to the child's biological and psychological needs. For these pioneers the psychoanalytic teachings on mental development were not only guideposts for the improvement of the child's developmental condition, but also a means to the realization of the utopian kibbutz ideal. The educational system in these socialistic kibbutzim was the first attempt at putting psychoanalytic knowledge into practice in education. These developments in the communal settlements helped to create an atmosphere conducive to psychoanalysis, and a readiness to accept psychoanalytic ideas.
When a small group of analysts, refugees from Germany led by M. Eitingon, came to Palestine in the thirties, they found much better conditions for their work than D. Feigenbaum had ten years before. In 1933 the Palestine Psychoanalytic Society was founded and admitted as a “component society” to the International Psychoanalytical Association. Eitingon planned to set up a Chair of Psychoanalysis at the Hebrew University (Freud belonged to its Board of Governors), but this met with difficulties, since the University Senate gave higher priority to the establishment of a Department of General Psychology. Eitingon therefore created an independent Psychoanalytic Institute in Jerusalem in 1934, modelled on the Berlin Institute which he had founded in 1920 and directed for many years. The Jerusalem Institute, in the same year it was founded, was awarded accreditation as a teaching institute by the Teaching Committee of the IPA. There were three aims to its activity: 1) Promotion of research in psychoanalysis and its application to related sciences; 2) Teaching and training in psychoanalysis; 3) Clinical work in the form of counselling and psychoanalytic treatment to needy people.
It was characteristic of the Israeli scene of those years that psychoanalysis met with much less opposition than in Europe where the so-called “Schulpsychiatrie” (conventional psychiatry) prevailed. This spirit of relative tolerance found expression in different ways. The newly founded medical schools included psychoanalytic teachings in their curricula; four of the hitherto eight presidents of the Israel Neuro-psychiatric, later the Psychiatric, Society were members of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. The 100th anniversary of S. Freud's birth in 1956 was celebrated on the initiative of the Psychoanalytic Society in close collaboration with the Hebrew University and the Neuropsychiatric Society. It was a very impressive occasion. The lecture hall in the Medical School where the ceremony was held was named after S. Freud, and the papers delivered on this occasion were published in 1957 by the Magnes Press of the Hebrew University.
The number of analysts has increased only very slowly, and this is partly due to the fact that training at the Psychoanalytic Institute is lengthy, governed by strict criteria, and that admission to the Society requires the presentation and discussion of a treated case and a majority vote of members. In 1943, the year Eitingon died, the Society had 18 members and in 1975, 42 years after its founding, only 41 members (plus 34 candidates), about 2/3 of them physicians and 1/3 psychologists. In the first years of its existence most of the members were trained in European institutes, but now about 60-70% are trainees of the Eitingon Psychoanalytic Institute in Jerusalem. The Israel Psychoanalytic Society holds its scientific meetings about every 6 weeks during the academic year, and the local groups meet once a month.
In the decades after World War II, interest of the Western world was aroused by the Israeli social experiment, especially as represented by the kibbutz movement. A number of scientific investigations were conducted on the subject of education in the kibbutz and its influence on character development and the formation of personality. In the summer of 1963, a conference on “Child Rearing Aims and Practices in the Kibbutz” was held in Haifa on the initiative of the child analyst P. Neubauer, Director of the Child Development Center of New York. At this conference, a number of American child analysts, child psychiatrists and educators discussed the subject with their Israeli colleagues. One of the results of this conference was the establishment of a research institute for kibbutz education.
In 1963 M. Ostow (New York) organized a group of “corresponding members” of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society in the U.S.A., with the aim of strengthening the bonds between the two societies. In 1970 a scientific meeting between this American group and the Israeli members took place in Jerusalem. Its main topic was the discussion of the psychological basis of war, based on the exchange of letters between S. Freud and A. Einstein which were published in 1932 under the title “Why War?” Thirteen papers were read at the meeting, 6 by Americans and 7 by Israelis, and 2 summaries, one by an American and one by an Israeli. Topics ranged from aggression, through the reaction of Israeli soldiers to the six-day War and post-war situation, to the general concepts of motivation for war and peace.
A further step in strengthening contacts with component societies of the IPA was taken in 1969, when its European Federation was established. The Israeli Psychoanalytic Society joined immediately after it was established.
As conditions in Israel created a great demand for psychotherapists, for whom there were not enough training facilities, the Israeli Psychoanalytic Institute in the academic year 1969/70 initiated a three-year training program for psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers with an M.A. degree, who either did not appear interested in, or suited for, admission as candidates for psychoanalytic training. After finishing this course, plus a prescribed amount of psychotherapeutic work under supervision, a diploma is awarded to these postgraduate students. Some of these trainees did subsequently apply for admission as candidates of the Institute after they had become acquainted with psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis plays a dominant role in Israel in the fields of youth immigration and of school hygiene. Henrietta Szold, the former Head of Youth Aliyah which is the organization which took care of immigrant children, had already in 1934 turned to M. Eitingon for counsel in cases of absorption difficulties or mental disturbances. Shortly after his immigration in 1938, the Viennese pediatrician and analyst K. Friedjung held a full-time position in this organization. He conducted seminars for youth leaders in which he discussed problems of early diagnosis of mental deviation, difficulties in adaptation, as well as sex education for youngsters in the light of psychoanalytic knowledge. Moreover, he personally provided counselling for youngsters and saw thousands of 14-18 year-olds in the years of his activity, which came to an end with his death in 1946. This aspect of Youth Aliyah's activity was subsequently expanded, in particular after the establishment of the State, now embracing even local youth with problems of social adaptation or growing up in pathogenic families.
It is hoped that the foregoing has shown how deep the roots of psychoanalysis are in Israel, and that it will provide participants of the forthcoming Psychoanalytical Congress with an idea of the situation of psychoanalysis in Israel. This Congress, to be held in Israel from August 21-26, 1977, will be the first to be held outside Europe since the start of the congresses in 1908. The founding of a Freud Chair for Psychoanalysis at the Hebrew University is planned on this occasion.
H. Z. Winnik
Jerusalem