Newsfeed > Psychoanalysts In War
I write this as I prepare to go to Israel in late December to volunteer working with evacuees and others from the Israeli communities bordering Gaza. Mostly I hope to spend time with the children at Beit Tzipporah, many from Ethiopian families, with whom I worked and wrote about in Sheba and Solomon’s Returns. Their town, Kiryat Malachi, is within rocket range of Gaza. This is personal: for instance, my research assistant, born in Ethiopia, has five children serving the IDF in Gaza.
Psychoanalysts became involved in war work in WWI: to name but a few, these included Simmel, who later opened a sanitarium for PTSD soldiers, Victor Tausk, and Georg Ferenczi and Georg Groddek. All were Jewish. Tausk, whose “Influencing Machine” paper is an elegant account of the bodily manifestations of psychosis, committed suicide in 1919. Freud, of course, was deeply troubled by the slaughter of WWI, including one of his nephews.
We leap to WWII and I cite only one of many who served: Roy Grinker, who was also my Chair of Psychiatry when I was a resident. Grinker had been analyzed by Freud in the early ’30s and later by Alexander. A German Jew raised in Chicago, Grinker was “too old” to serve, but volunteered and served in the North Africa arena. There, with Spiegel, he focused on acute traumatic disorder. The usual approach to war neurosis was to transfer the soldier to the European Hospital, then to the US: by that time, some months later, the Acute became the Post Traumatic. Grinker thought that treating the acute disorder might be more effective. He designed an approach under IV barbiturate hypnotic doses that guides the soldier to remember the traumatic event (most had repressed it), then act it out over several sessions with full remission. (And return to the front.) Grinker describes, in Men and War, the various overt manifestations of Acute Trauma that may present as catatonia or even psychosis. Yet the underlying pathology was the acute traumatic event. As you may know, this occurred without physical injury in most cases.
There is a long hiatus in which analysts abandoned the war field, although some continued to write about war, but not in the field, often from the comfort of their offices in Manhattan or New Haven. Nevertheless, Robert J. Lifton’s account of the Hiroshima survivors is moving and compelling.
The Vietnam War became a missed opportunity for analysts. The best therapeutic accounts come from Jonathan Shay; his Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America are remarkable accounts of the soldiers' own words and the group therapeutic approach for PTSD.
My more modest work began with Israeli soldiers from elite units (those units that faced the enemy eye-to-eye in many cases. One cannot volunteer for these units; one is chosen, then runs through rigorous training that sorts out many recruits. My book’s title, Reluctant Warriors From Rome to Jerusalem, reflects the soldiers’ reluctance to be a warrior, rather to be a son, a father, a husband, a teacher, an architect. The IDF is unusual as it is mostly a reserve army for large combats: in the ongoing current war, over 300,000 citizen-soldiers were called up and many more volunteered, including extremely Orthodox Jews.
For Reluctant Warriors, I made some two dozen trips to Israel. Then I emigrated and served as Freud Professor at the Hebrew University, a position held by one of my mentors, Al Sonia, and a teacher, Sid Blatt, and initiated by Sandler. During this time, I unwittingly worked at the front for the Lebanese War 2 and later in Kiryat Malachi for the Gaza Operation Lead. In the Lebanese War, I arrived to teach one day, and half my class was gone; called up. The next day, only the women were present, so I rented a Hyundai and drove north to work in the Metullah ER. I won’t detail this for the sake of space, but I will say that this was the closest I came to feeling worried about my physical well-being; for instance, when I felt the car buffeted by what I thought were cross-winds, but were shock waves from Hezbollah rockets.
For the Gaza conflict, I heard that my Ethiopian kids were being kept home for a week, because Gazan rockets were aimed at schools. (This was prior to Iron Dome.) So I drove from Jerusalem (about a 90-minute trip) to visit my kids at home. All the homes were within walking distance of the school, so I could park there and visit. The roads were silent. My kids were surprised and delighted that I visited and brought my paper and thick crayons. They proceeded to draw pictures and tell stories including those about the rockets.
For the sake of space, I stop here. But welcome questions and comments and urge colleagues to become involved in war work: the soldiers benefit; the children also and our discipline will strengthen itself and become more involved with our societies.
Nathan Szajnberg, MD, is Retired Freud Professor at the Hebrew University, former Wallerstein Research Fellow in Psychoanalysis and Ticho Awardee. He was born in Germany and educated at the University of Chicago College, Medical School and Pediatrics Internship. He has written several books, most recently, Psychic Mimesis: from Bible and Homer (Lexington) and The Secret Symmetry of Maimonides and Freud (Routledge). His third novel, part of the Jerusalem trilogy, is A Windmill, a Knight, a Ghost, a Jerusalem (Amazon). He lives in Palo Alto with his wife, Yikun, and four children.
Read more from Dr. Szajnberg:
On: Attachment and Psychoanalysis; Working Models and Part-Object Transferences
The Piggle: Decoding an Enigma
The Relationship between Mothering in Infancy, Childhood Experience and Adult Mental Health
Essays on returning from Israel volunteering as analyst (and farmer).