Bulletin: Psychology and Psychiatry in Israel

Articles

• O. Avny et al, Psychiatric Collaboration Models in Israel
• Joy Benatov et al, The Association Between Gender, Ethnicity, and Suicidality Among Vocational Students in Israel
• Sharon Dekel et al, Peripartum Depression, Traditional Culture, and Israeli Society
• Yohanan Eshel and Shaul Kimhi, Determinants of Individual Resilience Following Missile Attacks: A New Perspective
• Ravit Raufman, Ronit Nesher, and Haim Weinberg, Group Psychotherapy in Israel: History and Main Trends
• I. Reuveni et al, Cross-Sectional Survey on Defensive Practices and Defensive Behaviours among Israeli Psychiatrists

 

New Article: Morag, The Strategic Impact of an Iranian Nuclear Weapons Capability on Israel

Morag, Nadav. “The Strategic Impact of an Iranian Nuclear Weapons Capability on Israel.” In Nuclear Threats and Security Challenges, NATO Science for Peace and Security series (ed. Samuel Apikyan and David Diamond; Dordrecht: Springer, 2015): 135-46.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JRME-09-2014-0023

 

Abstract

This paper will address the likely strategic impact of an Iranian nuclear weapons capability on Israeli security, both in terms of the country’s regional standing within the Middle East, and in terms of its homeland security issues. It should be emphasized that an Iranian capacity to produce and deploy nuclear weapons in a fairly short period of time will have largely the same strategic impact on Israel as an already existing Iranian nuclear weapons capability because Iran will be able to claim that, by developing this capacity, it will be able to counter Israeli “aggression” in the Middle East, thus enhancing its prestige in the region and beyond. Moreover, an Iranian capability to develop and deploy nuclear weapons may embolden Iran to risk further confrontation with Israel, the United States, and America’s Arab allies because a nuclear weapons capability is likely to be perceived in Teheran, particularly by regime hardliners, as an insurance policy against a catastrophic attack on Iran that could threaten the regime’s hold on power. Finally, even if Iran does not actually build nuclear weapons, once it has the capacity to build them in a short period of time, Israel will need to think about the implications of their use against Israeli cities and what this means for its homeland security.

 

 

New Article: Cohen, Implicit Dehumanization and Anti-Arab Prejudice in Israeli Soldiers’ Narratives

Cohen, Shuki J. “Breakable and Unbreakable Silences: Implicit Dehumanization and Anti-Arab Prejudice in Israeli Soldiers’ Narratives Concerning Palestinian Women.” International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 12.3 (2015): 245-77.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aps.1461

 

Abstract

This paper illustrates an empirical paradigm for a minimally-biased characterization of the internal representations of female enemy members by male soldiers in the context of a military occupation. Using a combination of psycholinguistic and psychoanalytic tools, the study examined the associative structure of the language that was used by Israeli ex-soldiers in a large corpus of verbatim testimonies detailing their service in the Palestinian occupied territories. Since explicit dehumanization is rare in Israeli official discourse and in media- and political correctness-savvy occupying forces worldwide, this study examined implicit dehumanization through the non-conscious use of spontaneous linguistic choices. Using both computerized and quantitative linguistic analyses, this study tracked a particular pattern or word choice, presumed to capture implicit dehumanization based on a trans-disciplinary definition of the construct. Furthermore, to mitigate the potential confound between fear of the enemy and its dehumanization, this study focused on anecdotes concerning Palestinian women, as they pose less realistic threat to Israeli soldiers. Consistent with this study’s formulation of implicit dehumanization, Israeli soldiers tended to describe Palestinian women’s mental state in situational and behavioral terms (e.g. scream, make a mess, piss her pants, had a heart attack, etc.). In contrast, empathic inference – whereby the narrator extends their emotional understanding of themselves and other humans to the person whose emotional state they attempt to describe or understand – was often reserved in the testimonials only to the narrator and his fellow comrades. This evidence for implicit dehumanization is then discussed as a borderline-level defense mechanism within the larger context of both individual- and national-level anti-Arab prejudice in Israel.

 

 

New Article: Caspi, Apocalypse, Territory and Identity in Joseph Mundi’s Plays

Caspi, Zahava. “Apocalypse, Territory and Identity in Joseph Mundi’s The Ruler of Jericho and The Messiah.” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 27 (2014): 205ff (in Hebrew).

 

Abstract

My article deals with two of Joseph Mundi’s plays The Ruler of Jericho (1975) and The Messiah (1982). Though the first one was written after Yom Kippur War and the other seven years later, concerning the First Lebanon War – basically they treat the same topic. Both reveal the danger which is inherent in the aspiration for absolute unification between an imagined Utopian object (be it ‘the Promised Land’ or the ‘Ideal Sabra’) and its actual implementation in reality. Using two concepts which underlie every national entity – territory and identity – Mundi examines the apocalyptic implications of founding nationality upon biblical myths and utopian conceptions.

The relations between ‘place’ and ‘the place’ will be dealt through Foucault’s spatial terms: ‘Heterotopia’ as the opposite term of ‘Utopia’; and the question of Israeli identity will be explained through the concept of ‘Schizophrenia’, as used by Deleuze and Guattari. I will show that Mundi is proposing differentiality, multiplicity, and schizoidism – as defense mechanisms against the utopian desire for the ultimate.

כספי, זהבה. “אפוקליפיטקה, מרחב וזהות ב’מושל יריחו’ ו’המשיח’ מאת יוסף מונדי”. מחקרי ירושלים בספרות עברית כז (2014): 205 ואילך.