In my fourth interview for this column, which attempts to explore the lives and work of IAPSP members from different parts of the world, I am pleased to dialogue with Eldad Iddan from Jerusalem, Israel. This interview is most timely since the whole IAPSP community will be invited to participate in the 35th International Conference to be held in Jerusalem in October 2014 of which Eldad is chair of the planning committee. Last year, he was appointed by Shelley Doctors, IAPSP’s president elect, as her executive coordinator for the international regions. He is, among other affiliations, a founding member of the Israel Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity, faculty and clinical supervisor of the association’s program of advanced studies in self psychology at Tel Aviv University, Suckler faculty of medicine’s program of psychotherapy. Until recently he was head of the curriculum committee of the advanced program. He has translated into Hebrew How does Analysis Cure and (in collaboration with Tsilli Zonens) Self Psychology and the Humanities and The Restoration of the Self.

Eldad Iddan was born in 1951 in Jerusalem, Israel, where he grew up, studied at the Hebrew University, and got his post-graduate psychotherapy training at the Israel Psychoanalytic Institute. Jerusalem is also where he did his clinical internship in various psychiatric hospitals and community clinics, and where he still has part of his private clinic in psychotherapy with adolescents and adults (the other part being in Tel Aviv). He is married to Claudia, who is a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and they have three children, Tom 31, a sound engineer and musician, Amos 26, an art student, and Yael, 24, a dance student.

In what follows I focus on his experience working as a self-psychologically informed therapist in Israel.

I’m very interested in learning whom you would like me to feature in future columns. Please send your comments and suggestions to me at annetterichard@cooptel.qc.ca.

Interview with Eldad Iddan

Annette: Hello Eldad! Thank you for accepting my invitation to be interviewed for this eForum column. I am curious to know more about you, your work and your life in Israel, a part of the world which I’ve never seen, but of course have heard a lot about and hope to visit for the 2014 International IAPSP Conference. First, can you tell me when and how you became interested in Self Psychology?

Eldad: Hello Annette – Thank you for inviting me to be interviewed for the IAPSP website eForum. I hope this will be a good opportunity for the international membership to get a glimpse of the Self Psychology scene in Israel, where the 2014 international conference is going to take place.

When trying to explain how I got interested in self psychology the first thing that comes to mind is Connie Goldberg’s memoir, which she published in one of the last volumes of Progress in Self Psychology (I think it was 2003). There, she described her experience upon hearing for the first time Kohut’s presentation of what later became The Analysis of the Self. Reading her reminiscences, I felt that she was expressing something very similar to what I had felt. Like her, most of my training was quite traditional, with maybe only Winnicott being different and more attractive in ways I am not sure I was able to either describe or explain. Then, in the late 1970s, around the beginning of my internship in a government hospital, Prof. Pinhas Noy, of the Israel Psychoanalytic, came to give a seminar on The Analysis of the Self. It was my impression that he, being a more classical analyst, read and taught Kohut in a rather reserved and critical way. But apparently, his stance could not interfere with my enthusiasm and sense of liberation upon reading this, to me, yet unknown writer; the experiential validity that his writing had, seemed to have responded to my unease and many of the unanswered questions I had in my early practice. It felt as though this mysterious stranger from Chicago was encouraging me to loosen-up, allowing me to be more involved, and almost more human. His emphasis on subjective experience and need rather than mechanism and drive, his talk of empathy, all were mind blowing. A feast of common sense and experience nearness, things I had felt were so missing in my former reading in Ego Psychology, Klein, and others.

Annette: This was surely a turning point personally and professionally for you Eldad, an experience many classically trained analysts had at about the same period. Your account of it is moving. How did you go from there to adopting a self psychologically informed approach in your practice?

Eldad: It sure was a turning point. Yet, I did not have any contact with any other self psychologist until Yossi Tamir, then a candidate at the Israel Analytic, came to the hospital I was working in. He became my supervisor, and not only helped me with my treatments of schizophrenic patients, and gave me taste of the wonders a self psychological stance can work, but also backed me up vis-à-vis hostile, burnt-out and critical staff members. They seemed to resent what seemed to them like a revival of deeply subdued chronic patients, who all of a sudden became more animated, demanding more attention and care. Later on, in the community child guidance clinic where I was stationed next, I was lucky to have Ra’anan Kulka, then also a candidate at the Israel Psychoanalytic, as my first supervisor. I soon discovered that he, too, was “infected” with the Kohutian bug, and seized the opportunity to learn from him, both in my clinical practice and in my more systematic attempts at reading of Self Psychological writings. This became a long standing and lasting affair. Its beginning was at that child guidance clinic, but it continued when, after my having been licensed, I started my own private practice, and gathered some colleagues of my own cohort for a study group with him. Over the years he was, and still is, my mentor, colleague and friend, and we were jointly involved in activities where self psychological thought was a beacon and central pivot.

Annette: This story sounds very much like a love affair which eventually bloomed into an Israeli self psychology community. When did you start having contact with the American and international community?

Eldad: In 1997 Ra’anan introduced me to Anna and Paul Ornstein, who extended to me the hospitality of their home in Cincinnati and of their International Center for the Study of Self Psychology at the department of psychiatry in UC. They reviewed cases I brought to them, guided me through their outstanding library, and took me along to all their activities of teaching, supervising and leading seminars, at the hospital and at the Cincinnati Analytic. Through them I met Connie and Arnold Goldberg, who came to visit and talk of Arnold’s new book on perversions. I came back from Cinti all the more convinced that clinically and theoretically, I had found my professional home. And it did indeed bloom rapidly into a very active community. Upon my return, Ra’anan, Michal Hazan, also a self psychologist, and I, came up with the idea of forming an Israeli Self Psychology group. Soon thereafter, we were joined by Yossi Tamir and some other analysts and candidates who were exposed to Self Psychology during Jim Fisch’s stay in Israel. We started meeting and studying together on a regular basis. We initiated some very successful intensive day workshops, dedicated to demonstrating to colleagues from the local mental health community, how a self-psychological vantage point can enrich and deepen their understanding of the clinical materials they brought to the workshops. I believe that we stirred quite an interest in our field, and this was attested to by the fact, that in the year 2000, the head of the psychotherapy program in Tel Aviv University invited us, as a group, to create a 3 year curriculum of advanced studies in Self Psychology for their graduates. We took on the challenge, and to everybody’s surprise, including our own, over 30 students, all experienced psychotherapists, enrolled. It was a very successful program, and on these very days the fourth consecutive group is about to graduate, while the fifth group is still ongoing, and a sixth is going to begin next fall. Actually, after the first three groups graduated, each of them decided to continue studying together, with our support, and they still do it at present. Many of them joined the Israeli association, and also joined the IAPSP. This influenced our decision to extend the curriculum at the university and turn it into a 4 years program. Some of our early graduates by now have become faculty and supervisors for later groups.

Annette: I am very impressed by all you accomplished with your group of colleagues. Getting a successful training program set up like you did, you needed to have very dedicated teachers and trainers which you clearly now have in Israel. Now to move on to another crucial aspect of your reality, I recently had the privilege of reading the paper you wrote on your life and work within the Israeli-Palestinian political upheaval, a paper which will be published in a forthcoming Psychoanalytic Inquiry issue¹. I was moved by how, by encountering in Palestinians the same miserable conditions you had seen in documentary films about the Holocaust, you came to the realization that Israel, your “small, brave and just country” had become, in many ways, the perpetrator. Could you tell us some of your personal positions in the context of this bitter and painful conflict?

Eldad: You touch upon a very crucial point. As I have described in the forthcoming paper you mention, this political conflict was, and still is, a constant presence, hovering over my life and that of all people who inhabit this torn region. Reality is in fact very complex, and I don’t think that going into its immense scope would be appropriate here. Let me just say, that I am afraid that what the international public is exposed to in the media concerning our situation, is probably slanted and very partial. One of the most painful things is that this conflict does not only tear the region apart, but it also creates very deep rifts within each of the parties involved. In Israel, there are various shades of left wing attitudes, which generally support a two-state solution, with vast territorial concessions in order to allow for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in the lands that had been conquered in the 1967 war. They oppose the occupation of Palestinian territories, on moral as well as on pragmatic grounds. They feel that not only have we become oppressive colonial perpetrators of evil, but that we ourselves have been internally corrupted by being occupiers of a land that isn’t ours. It is our responsibility to seek a way of respecting our neighbors and dialoguing with them for our own benefit as well as for theirs. On the opposite side, you have various shades of right wing attitudes, which tend to believe that the Jews are entitled to the whole land, by virtue of God’s promise to Abraham. On this basis, some of them started establishing Jewish settlements in the midst of Palestinian territories, hoping thereby to create irreversible facts that would prevent any possibility of territorial concessions. Israeli governments did not, for most part, act rigorously enough against these actions. These two opponent factions in Israel are in a very fierce conflict: The left wingers see the settlers as fundamental reactionaries, whose fanaticism is going to lead to our doom; the right wingers think and speak of the leftists as defeatist, even as down-right traitors, and they are supported, even incited by their religious leaders and rabbis (this is what had lead to the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, by a religious fanatic, indirectly encouraged by his rabbi. He did this as a reaction against Rabin’s having signed the Oslo accord with Yasser Arafat.) Even though they outnumber the left wingers in the parliament, they are much more radical in their actions. Every now and then, especially in retaliation of some Palestinian terrorist actions, they raid Palestinian villages, burn cars, vandalize mosques and uproot Palestinian olive trees, at times even shoot Palestinians. This way they deepen the hatred and the motivation of Palestinians to act against Israelis, and thus the vicious circle of violence is being perpetuated. This internal conflict seeps into our daily lives here, and as I’ve shown in my forthcoming paper, even into our consulting rooms. Personally, I am in favor of a two-state solution, I oppose the occupation, view the settlements as illegal, abhor the atrocities of the settlers and the government’s covert support of them. I am frustrated by the helplessness of those who feel like me, and I am deeply worried by the directions all this takes.

Annette: Eldad, you convey the complexity of this situation very well, and the many levels of conflicts it evokes personally and socially. But how do you go on living in such a bitterly torn and wounded country?

Eldad: One cannot overlook the fact, even with this insane situation, we somehow manage to live normally, maybe by the help of some vertical split. Most of our daily life seems rather similar to what you find in Western countries. In spite of all the above misgivings, I have to admit that I am very proud of the fact that Israel is still rather democratic; people like me can freely express their opinions and criticisms, and have their representatives in the Knesset (our parliament), though their number is, alas, smaller than what I would have liked it to be; sciences and arts are flourishing; we export not only weapons, but advanced agricultural knowledge and technologies to third world countries; we are known and sought for our high-tech expertise; we send experts and experience to extend humanitarian aid to disaster areas around the world.

The complexity of it all is mind boggling, and I feel that at times, I myself am driven by it to extremes, and to very binary views. On the one hand, most of the time I find myself almost tolerant and compassionate towards Palestinians, who I see as oppressed by us, more so than towards Israeli settlers and right wingers. When hearing of their actions I cannot empathize with them; I am outraged. On the other hand, I haven’t forgotten those Palestinian suicide bombers who exploded themselves inside Israeli buses, or the Palestinian mortars and rockets sent into the hearts of southern Israel towns and villages, indiscriminately killing and injuring hundreds of Israeli civilians. There’s no excuse for that. I understand their motive, I condemn their deeds. And when I manage to shed my prejudices against them, I can see that the Israeli settlers are human too, they genuinely and deeply love their land and, like the Palestinians, are willing to give their lives to conquer and defend it. I can see that they work toward what they truly believe in. I disagree with their beliefs.

Annette: Hearing about this highly conflictual emotional context in which you all live, I can better understand what you illustrate in your forthcoming paper, that is how your empathic stance is constantly challenged by conflicting moral values in working with your patients of different or same political views. Could you sum up for us what you have learned by coping with this challenge in a situation of ongoing social and political unrest?

Eldad: Summing this up isn’t a simple task. I mean, I would have liked to be able to formulate some generalized rules that could be gleaned from my experience. Unfortunately, the complexity of the situations and challenges is such, that more often than not, one has to re-invent the appropriate way of dealing with what is at hand.
When thinking it over, two points come to my mind:

Tentatively, I find that Kohut’s concept of vertical split might be useful in describing some of the ad-hoc solutions I’ve reached. Looking back at some of the instances, where I was confronted with a patient, whose emotional distress and suffering touched me, but whose expressed political views were unacceptable to me, I somehow seemed to have managed to disavow, or split off, those aspects which I had difficulty stomaching, and let the patient’s anguish and neediness lead me and my responses. Of course, this is something I can state in retrospect, and I am not quite sure how conscious of it I have been at the time. Therefore, I don’t think I can really give someone any tips as to how one should go about these instances. I tend to assume, that when one makes a genuine effort to put oneself in the other person’s shoes, one consciously attempts to brush aside personal attitudes and beliefs, and concentrate on the other’s experience. I know that there were other moments though, where I was not quite successful in vertically splitting off my inner responses from what I was confronted with, and I am afraid that, more than once, this had caused the break of some therapeutic alliances.

The other point that comes to mind is an ethical one, which further complexifies (to use Max Sucharov’s term) the issue. I believe that as psychotherapists, it is our ethical responsibility to listen empathically to those who seek our help, attend to their suffering, and refrain from judging them, their acts, beliefs and persuasions. But isn’t it our equally important ethical human responsibility to take a stand against actions that we feel are immoral and unethical? Could I really be genuinely empathic with someone who expels people from their homes and overtakes their lands, or someone who puts a lethal bomb in the midst of a civilian crowd in a shopping center? Is there a vertical split deep enough to enable us to overlook such atrocities and be empathic with the suffering of such a perpetrator? I think not. I know that there were times when I could not ignore what I felt and believed in, and perhaps I shouldn’t have.

Annette: How poignant are the questions you just raised, Eldad! First, I do think your effort of concentrating on your patient’s experience when his or her political views hurt your sensibility could also be described by what Donna Orange calls “stretching toward the other”, an effort which at times is emotionally very demanding, and I think often transformative for you. As for taking a stand against such atrocities with patients who might be either perpetrators or victims, maybe we are first called as therapists, as witnesses to such injustices, to recognize how we unwittingly participate with them or profit from them, and how this is present in our interactions within the seemingly closed off therapeutic space. Would you also say that the questions you raised call us to move from bystanders or from witnesses to activists pressing for social action?

Eldad: Thank you Annette. I couldn’t have formulated it more clearly and accurately. I can easily adopt your use of Donna Orange’s “stretching toward the other”, and I would definitely agree with the conclusion that we are called upon to move from standing by or passively witnessing to actual activism. Becoming an activist in the external socio-political reality is relatively simpler – there are Socio-political movements one can join, there are actions you can take in order to protest and press for change. But I think that the question still remains, what form could and should this activism take within the consulting room. This is where I feel that the ground I am on is rather shaky.

Annette: And so it is, Eldad. It will remain as a crucial question concluding very well this moving and enlightening interview. Thank you so much for your openness and generosity in answering such sensitive questions. I have learned a great deal and I am sure our eForum readers will too.

¹ Iddan, E. (forthcoming). When the External Conflict Quietly Invades the Intimacy of the Therapeutic Dyad: Reflections on Conducting Therapy within the Context of Political