Understanding the Israeli psyche

The Hero and His Shadow

Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel

The Six Day War between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan broke out on June 5, 1967, after Egypt had mobilized along the Israeli border, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships, and Israel was threatened by invasion of Arab forces. After a sweeping victory, Israel came to occupy large neighboring areas, but has since withdrawn from Sinai, Gaza and 40% of the West Bank. However, as victorious as Israel was, relieving the deadly threat, led by then Chief-of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, the prolonged occupation of territory in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank, is detrimental not only to the Palestinians, but to Israeli society as well.

The release of tension resulted in years of denial and inflation, as for instance expressed in the infamous words of General Shmuel Gonen (Gorodish), “We looked Death straight in the eye, and Death lowered its gaze,” (The Hero and His Shadow, p. 20), which crashed into the Yom Kippur War six years later.

Contents

Preface The Beggar in the Hero’s Shadow

Chapter 1 Return to the Source

Chapter 2 From My Notebook

Chapter 3 From Dream to Reality

Chapter 4 Origins and Myths

Chapter 5 From Redemption to Shadow

Chapter 6 Wholeness Apart

Chapter 7 Myth, Shadow and Projection

Chapter 8 A Crack in the Mask

Chapter 9 The Death of the Mythical and the Voice of the Soul

Dedication of The Hero and His Shadow

I dedicate this book to those, all too many, whose voices were silenced by man’s evil.

I dedicate it to those, all too few, who raise their voice against fascism, who speak up in the struggle for peace and reconciliation, especially between Palestinians and Israelis, incessantly on the verge of yet another cycle of violence and hostilities.

I dedicate it to those who try to hold the vulnerable balance in that ultimate conflict of Abraham between Father and Son, divine and human, idea and implementation, past and future, ego and self.
I dedicate this book to the daughters and the sons whose future is endangered.

Comments

Imitation and the Archetypal Adult

In The Cycle of Life: Themes and Tales of the Journey , I mention five pathologies that I relate to the idea of the Archetypal Adult. In this brief presentation I mention an additional one, which Jung speaks about – imitation. In the Red Book he writes, “The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship.” In Two Essays in Analytical Psychology he writes, "The human being has one faculty which, though it is of the greatest utility from the collective point of view, is immeasurably detrimental from the standpoint of individuality; the faculty of imitation. Collective psychology can never dispense with imitation, for without it the organization of the masses, that of the state and of society, is quite simply impossible. Society is organized, indeed, less by law than by the propensity to imitation, implying equally suggestibility, suggestion, and moral contagion." Imitation is a sh...

Rooftops and Towers of Prague

'Rooftops and Towers of Prague,' a drawing by Petr Ginz, 1928-1944 (Yad vaShem). Born in Prague, Petr spent his adolescence in the children's home in the Theresienstadt ghetto. He was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in the fall of 1944. In 2003, Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut that perished in the space shuttle Columbia , took Petr Ginz's drawing 'Moon Landscape' (see below) with him from the Yad Vashem collection. I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Czech Society for Analytical Psychology, to deliver a lecture and a workshop on the Cycle of Life . Following several years of experience with the impressive Bulgarian Jung Society, as well as visiting the groups in Poland, Estonia, and the Czech Republic, I can testify to the admirable devotion and seriousness found among the analysts, therapists and students in these countries. Their thirst for knowledge is a source of inspiration, and in only a few years the therapists in these countries have g...

The Cycle of Life - an excerpt

From Chapter 3, The Puer and the Puella Who are they, the young man and the maiden, the puer and the puella? We easily recognize them in everyday confrontations with moody teenagers, when sexual desire competes with dark rage, the one setting the house on fire, the other breaking up the walls. Alternatively, and even worse, inexplicable withdrawal makes the earth quake in deadening silence. There is beauty struggling with acne, and tender sensuality trying to contain awkward clumsiness. Eros and desire break through the face of insecure constraint, mercilessly exposing their blushing flare. Hope for the future competes with anxiety of failure and apocalyptic fears. Thomas Coyle: Youth Art and poetry, mythology, music and literature, abound with tales and pictures of the pain, suffering and sorrow of young Werthers, of hidden loneliness when the birds sing out of tune in a world without love, of trying to save the child in a world characterized by alienation an...

Anxiety and the Postmodern Condition

Search This Blog