Post-Graduate Studies in Jung's Analytical Psychology

We are pleased to announce the opening of a post-graduate program in

Jung's Analytical Psychology

Bar Ilan University, Continuing Education, Weisfeld School of Social Work

Dr. Erel Shalit, Director

For further details, please click here

Studies are conducted in Hebrew.

For Jungian studies in English, please contact Dr. Shalit, shalit@eshalit.com

הפסיכולוגיה האנליטית של יונג
מרכז אקדמי: ד"ר אראל שליט

אנו שמחים להודיע על פתיחת תוכנית חד שנתית של העמקה בפסיכולוגיה האנליטית של יונג, במסגרת היחידה ללימודי המשך, .של בית הספר לעבודה סוציאלית, ע"ש לואיס וגבי וייספלד, אוניברסיטת בר-אילן
מטרת התכנית היא להכיר את תורתו של יונג ואת הגישה הטיפולית הנגזרת ממנה. הגישה מרחיבה את הבנת נפש האדם במישור

.האישי, בסביבתו התרבותית והרוחנית, כפי שמשתקף הדבר באגדות, מיתוסים וחלומות

מלבד הכרת המושגים היונגיאנים, נעמיק בהבנת נפש האדם במעגל חייו, בתהליך האינדיבידואציה המתמשך שלו, בחלום

.וסמליו ובצל האדם

. התכנית מיועדת לאנשי מקצוע בתחומי הטיפול, השיקום והייעוץ החינוכי

.הלימודים יתקיימו בימי שני, בשעות 15:00 - 20:30, 30 מפגשים, סה"כ 180 שעות

ניתן לפנות לאראל שליט או אבי באומן

shalit@orange.net.il

yoavib@netvision.net.il

באתר של היחדה ללימודי המשך ניתן למצוא פרטים אודות התוכנית, ולהוריד טופס הרשמה

http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/sw/hemshech/b13.html

(טל. 03-5317265; cont.education@mail.biu.ac.il).

José María Aznar: If Israel goes down, we all go down

José María Aznar, Former Prime Minister of Spain, has written an important opinion piece in the Times, June 17, 2010. His position reflects truthfully how vulnerable and precarious the present situation is in Israel. While Israel possibly is equipped to deal with many of the threats the country presently encounters, the increasing demonization, which skillfully deconstructs its legitimacy, may provide the successful road to the final solution for those who seek it.

Following Aznar's opinion piece you will find an excerpt from my novella Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return, which deals with this subject. The book is presently on sale at Fisher King Press, see details below.

If Israel goes down, we all go down
By José María Aznar

For far too long now it has been unfashionable in Europe to speak up for Israel. In the wake of the recent incident on board a ship full of anti-Israeli activists in the Mediterranean, it is hard to think of a more unpopular cause to champion.

In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the Mavi Marmara would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship. In an ideal world, no state, let alone a recent ally of Israel such as Turkey, would have sponsored and organised a flotilla whose sole purpose was to create an impossible situation for Israel: making it choose between giving up its security policy and the naval blockade, or risking the wrath of the world.

In our dealings with Israel, we must blow away the red mists of anger that too often cloud our judgment. A reasonable and balanced approach should encapsulate the following realities: first, the state of Israel was created by a decision of the UN. Its legitimacy, therefore, should not be in question. Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology.

Second, owing to its roots, history, and values, Israel is a fully fledged Western nation. Indeed, it is a normal Western nation, but one confronted by abnormal circumstances.

Uniquely in the West, it is the only democracy whose very existence has been questioned since its inception. In the first instance, it was attacked by its neighbours using the conventional weapons of war. Then it faced terrorism culminating in wave after wave of suicide attacks. Now, at the behest of radical Islamists and their sympathisers, it faces a campaign of delegitimisation through international law and diplomacy.

Sixty-two years after its creation, Israel is still fighting for its very survival. Punished with missiles raining from north and south, threatened with destruction by an Iran aiming to acquire nuclear weapons and pressed upon by friend and foe, Israel, it seems, is never to have a moment’s peace.

For years, the focus of Western attention has understandably been on the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. But if Israel is in danger today and the whole region is slipping towards a worryingly problematic future, it is not due to the lack of understanding between the parties on how to solve this conflict. The parameters of any prospective peace agreement are clear, however difficult it may seem for the two sides to make the final push for a settlement.

The real threats to regional stability, however, are to be found in the rise of a radical Islamism which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfilment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony. Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large.

The core of the problem lies in the ambiguous and often erroneous manner in which too many Western countries are now reacting to this situation. It is easy to blame Israel for all the evils in the Middle East. Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly.

Israel is our first line of defence in a turbulent region that is constantly at risk of descending into chaos; a region vital to our energy security owing to our overdependence on Middle Eastern oil; a region that forms the front line in the fight against extremism. If Israel goes down, we all go down. To defend Israel’s right to exist in peace, within secure borders, requires a degree of moral and strategic clarity that too often seems to have disappeared in Europe. The United States shows worrying signs of heading in the same direction.

The West is going through a period of confusion over the shape of the world’s future. To a great extent, this confusion is caused by a kind of masochistic self-doubt over our own identity; by the rule of political correctness; by a multiculturalism that forces us to our knees before others; and by a secularism which, irony of ironies, blinds us even when we are confronted by jihadis promoting the most fanatical incarnation of their faith. To abandon Israel to its fate, at this moment of all moments, would merely serve to illustrate how far we have sunk and how inexorable our decline now appears.

This cannot be allowed to happen. Motivated by the need to rebuild our own Western values, expressing deep concern about the wave of aggression against Israel, and mindful that Israel’s strength is our strength and Israel’s weakness is our weakness, I have decided to promote a new Friends of Israel initiative with the help of some prominent people, including David Trimble, Andrew Roberts, John Bolton, Alejandro Toledo (the former President of Peru), Marcello Pera (philosopher and former President of the Italian Senate), Fiamma Nirenstein (the Italian author and politician), the financier Robert Agostinelli and the Catholic intellectual George Weigel.

It is not our intention to defend any specific policy or any particular Israeli government. The sponsors of this initiative are certain to disagree at times with decisions taken by Jerusalem. We are democrats, and we believe in diversity.

What binds us, however, is our unyielding support for Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself. For Western countries to side with those who question Israel’s legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel’s vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude.

Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is upturned and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Whether we like it or not, our fate is inextricably intertwined.

José María Aznar was prime minister of Spain between 1996 and 2004.

During his daydream, Eliezer Shimeoni, the protagonist of Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return, imagines the men and the women, the elderly and the infants, crowding the sandy shores, boarding the ships that set sail across the Sea. That very moment he understood why the passionate longing for home had anchored in the Jewish soul, and why the sense of the soul’s exile wandered like a shadow behind every Jew. Those shores he knew so well were no longer full of playing children or of smiling lads and teasing maidens and suntanned tourists. In his mind he saw, rather, the pushing and the screaming, the anxiety and the desperate clinging together for comfort, as the fate of dispersal lie in wait for the Jews of the Destroyed Temple, soon to board the ships of salvage for a future of pogroms and persecution.

Now, just like then, many had stayed behind, perhaps mostly those that had had no choice, scattered in little towns and villages around the country, under foreign rule. He imagined the day of upheaval, when Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai, youngest pupil of Hillel was smuggled out of Jerusalem in flames in a coffin during the Great Siege.

Yochanan understood that as Jerusalem was on fire and the Temple destroyed, a historical era had come to its end. He established the Council of Yavneh. While he himself still resided in the Land of the Fathers, this would be the beginning of Rabbinical Judaism, and millennia of Diaspora Judaism. For Eli S. this was the picture of a fugitive, of a refugee in the making. Exile and return had been wavering back and forth for centuries, even before the destruction of the Second Temple. But the year seventy of our common era was a moment close enough in time so that he could touch it, or that was recent enough to touch him. He could almost stretch out his hand across the short distance in history, and grab the side of the coffin, as if he himself carried Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai out of the burning Jerusalem, across the hills and the fields down to the coastal plain, for future wanderings to be drawn on the maps of the world.…

His tranquil ruminations about exile and return, rebirth and destruction, were suddenly interrupted when Professor Shimeoni felt his entire body flush, feeling as if he had been stripped of his clothes, to bare nudity. He recalled the words of the Norwegian philosopher Jostein Gaarder, of “Sophie’s World” fame, who in 2006 wrote, “We do no longer recognize the State of Israel. … We laugh at this people’s – the Jews – fancies and weep over its misdeeds.” Then, foreseeing the fulfillment of his wet dream he excels in triumphant compassion, exclaiming “Peace and free passage for the evacuating civilian population no longer protected by a state. Fire not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now like snails without shells… Give the Israeli refugees shelter, give them milk and honey!” Not a far cry from Hamas leader Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, whose diagnosis says, “Israel has no historical, religious, or cultural justification, and we will never establish relations with this cancer.”

Quickly, quickly, help get rid off the cancer! I accuse, I accuse you, Jostein Gaarder, and with you I accuse those European intellectuals, with whom I have always felt affinity, who collaborate with the grand deception, 21st Century Faux, in which the boundaries have been blurred between empathy of the heart and apocalyptic hell, between depth of mind and simplicity of thought, Shimeoni exclaimed to the absent audience.

…He recalled the words of Chaim Potok, who so poignantly gave voice to that collective concern, “To be a Jew in this century is to understand fully the possibility of the end of mankind, while at the same time believing with certain faith that we will survive.” Living in Israel was certainly living at life’s edge, at the edge of survival.

Bitter irony turned into sour cynicism, as Professor Shimeoni reflected on the word “certain.” He was convinced that an eloquent writer such as Potok had purposefully used the ambiguous word certain. “Is there a word more uncertain than certain?” he asked himself rhetorically. “Did Potok mean that we could be sure, could be certain in our faith that we will survive, or did he mean that we may have some, a bit, perhaps a certain bit of faith that we will survive?”

Dr. Erel Shalit is a psychoanalyst and author, and past President of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology. Erel Shalit has served as officer in the IDF Medical Corps, has been on the council of Meretz, and is a member of The Council for Peace and Security. His latest book, the novella Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return, is a fictitious account of a scenario played out in the mind of many Israelis, pertaining to existential reflections and apocalyptic fears, but then, as well, the hope and commitment that arise from the abyss of trepidation.

Enemy, Cripple, Beggar is on sale now for $17.95 and
Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return is on sale now for $14.95,
or
$30.00 for the pair when ordered directly from the Fisher King Press Online Bookstore.
You can also order The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitcal Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel directly from Fisher King Press.

Phone orders welcomed, Credit Cards accepted. 1-800-228-9316 toll free in the US & Canada, International +1-831-238-7799.

Fisher King Press / PO Box 222321 / Carmel, CA 93922 / Phone: 831-238-7799 / orders@fisherkingpress.com / http://www.fisherkingpress.com/

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Fisher King Press Newsletter
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“Technology is rewiring our brains”

In a recent article in the New York Times, Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price, by Matt Richtel, June 6, 2010, Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and a leading brain scientists, claims that technology is changing our brains. As compared to fifty years ago, we consume three times as much information. We are constantly on the go, associatively moving from one site to another, whether in the cyberworld or in the world of non-locality, or non-places, as French philosopher Mark Augé calls the supermarkets, highways and airport lounges. While the brains of Internet users are more efficient at finding information, they have greater difficulty staying focused, and differentiating between relevant and the irrelevant. Not only is the brain affected and going through changes due to the features of the post-modern condition, but behavior and personality as well. The emphasis of ego-functions on motor coordination rather than creativity and depth of thought is not without consequences.In my recent paper ‘Destruction of the Image and the Worship of Transiency’ (Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche, February 2010) I discuss aspects of the post-modern condition and the Transient Personality who emerges from and is him (or her-)self a manifestation of it. These features include speed without digestion, excessive association rather than staying centered, and the transient masks provided by cyber-pseudonymity.

With the benefits of technological and scientific progress, we also pay a price; spending twelve hours of media-time per day, may create the sense of being connected with the world, but may leave us alienated from ourselves. It may leave us, as well, with an utterly false understanding of the world, since we come to understand the recorded image of it, which, as Susan Sontag said already many years ago, “is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks.”The consequence may be that we banish our selves into exile.

I will have the opportunity to elaborate on these issues at the forthcoming Assisi conference, taking place July 20-27 on the Island of Procida, Italy in the Bay of Naples.
For further details, see The Assisi Conference.

Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return is on sale now for $14.95, and Enemy, Cripple, Beggar is on sale now for $19.95 or $30.00 for the pair when ordered directly from the Fisher King Press.  You can also order The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitcal Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel directly from Fisher King Press. Phone orders welcomed, Credit Cards accepted. 1-800-228-9316  toll free in the US & Canada, International +1-831-238-7799
Download the
Fisher King Press Newsletter
Fisher King Press Catalog of Publications
Fisher King Press Price List and Order Form

Deconstructing Israel

The young men of the Israeli Navy commando that boarded the Mavi Marmara, should be commended for their exemplary conduct. In a complex and unexpectedly violent situation, they showed admirable restraint. They were attacked by a mob of hooligans with knives, batons and gunfire, some whom were Al-Qaida linked mercenaries - not the peace activists they had anticipated and prepared for.

Is Israel entitled to prevent ships from entering Gaza?

The Hamas regime, having taken power by force, calls for the destruction of Israel, does whatever it can, including the firing of thousands of rockets, kidnappings and bombings, to achieve this goal. Yet, over the last 18 months more than a million tons of humanitarian supplies entered Gaza from Israel – nearly a ton per person.

The decision to divert the convoy at sea, rather than await its arrival at Gaza coast, with the prepared manifestations and provocations, seems to be legally justified and tactically reasonable.

Is the blockade itself an immoral act of collective punishment, as for instance author Amos Oz says?

Considering the fact that the Hamas regime is more intent on destroying Israel than caring for the welfare of its own population (including the killing of 600 Palestinians, and wounding 2000 of their opponents by shooting them in the leg or knee), Israel’s insisting on examining the shiploads for ammunition and weaponry flowing into the Hamas terror-state may well be a legitimate act of self-defense. There is a similar sea blockade of Lebanon, upheld by other countries. However, that blockade is not put to a test, since the land road from Iran to Hezbollah is open via Syria.

While there are moral and political issues to contemplate as regards Israel’s and Egypt’s blockade, the two countries may be justified in preventing attacks from Gaza.

If all is so right, how come that it turns out so wrong?

How come that maintaining a blockade against an illegitimate, extremist terror regime, becomes a critical leap in the delegitimization of Israel, rather than delegitimizing those, whose intent it is to destroy the Jewish State?

Israel has not grasped well-enough the principles of post-modern warfare, in contrast to its enemies. Thus, an unholy alliance of evil and innocence stretches from Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, to NGO’s and peace-activists, on to the UN and many Western regimes.

In the post-modern era, the emphasis is not on truth and value, but narrative and image. Thus, the open-minded and well-meaning become collaborators to fundamentalists and reactionaries in the creation of a narrative of innocence and victimization, vs. Israeli militarism and oppression.

Israel should not follow the lead of its enemies in constructing false images, such as the false accusations against Israel about the so-called Jenin massacre and an ever-increasing list of lies, but present an honest and consistent narrative, preferably the desire for peace by two states for two peoples. If the narrative is sincere, based on inner conviction, then truth will stand on firmer legs than slander and lies.

Furthermore, the ratio between physical and virtual warfare has changed. While combat at the physical battlefield once constituted the essence, the ease and access of images nowadays reverses the ratio. The unscrupulous use made by the Free Gaza Movement of a compote of terror-linked organizations and well-meaning solidarity movements, creates a façade of Palestinian innocence and victimization, and condemnation and delegitimization of Israel.

Besides an honest and consistent narrative, Israel needs to utilize the means of the post-modern era. Thus, for example, as regards the Marmara, Israel should not be reluctantly drawn into an international investigation, but initiate and demand the affair be interrogated. There is place to look into Israel’s blockade – morally, politically and militarily; the legal and military conduct when taking command of the ship; the extent of humanitarian aid that reaches or does not reach Gaza, and who is responsible – this may be an arena for Israel to present its case.

But no less, there is a need to look into the legal aspects of breaking a possibly legitimate blockade; what is the civilian/military status of those who violently reject and oppose enforcement of such a blockade; what is truly the terror-affiliation of some of the organizers; what is the involvement of the Turkish government with the IHH and the flotilla (if so, and if the blockade is legal, does that possibly indicate even an act of warfare by Turkey against Israel?).

Please take a look at the two pictures above – they explain how the transition from Jihad militant to peace activist takes place.

The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet has released photos from the Marmara ship, showing beaten Israelis commando soldiers (see photo on top). In the Turkish narrative, humiliation of Israelis is important, and therefore the photos can be shown authentically, without any need of hiding or distorting. If the Israelis are weak, they can be overcome and cleansed from the country, which is the aim of both the PLO and the Hamas, as expressed in their respective charters.

However, in a Western narrative, peace and solidarity are vital. Thus, now look at the picture below, as released by Reuters. Notice how the knife, low right, in the hand of one of the men, has been cropped. The photo may, in fact, be interpreted as if the 'peace activists' actually are lending a helping hand to the poor soldier.

The subtle change of the picture is hardly noticeable, yet has dramatic accumulated consequences. Over the last decade, this has been repeated over and over again, until even the well-meaning have become convinced of Israel's evil.

History does repeat itself, even if the means are post-modern. Without adequate understanding of the post-modern condition, demonization and delegitimization may eventually ‘succeed,’ whereby Israel will be dismantled and replaced by an Islamic State of Palestine. The West will most likely, then, kindly request it to commemorate the people and the culture that preceded it.

To change history’s course of disaster, Israel needs to find ways to terminate occupation, to deal with Palestinian double-talk of peace, on the one hand, and ongoing incitement, on the other, and to be more creative in facilitating the awakening from the odd, delusional partnership between Western open-mindedness and Islamic fundamentalism.

Dr. Erel Shalit is a psychoanalyst and author, and past President of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology. Erel Shalit has served as officer in the IDF Medical Corps, has been on the council of Meretz, and is a member of The Council for Peace and Security. His latest book, the novella Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return, is a fictitious account of a scenario played out in the mind of many Israelis, pertaining to existential reflections and apocalyptic fears, but then, as well, the hope and commitment that arise from the abyss of trepidation.

Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return is on sale now for $14.95, and Enemy, Cripple, Beggar is on sale now for $17.95 or $30.00 for the pair when ordered directly from the Fisher King Press.  You can also order The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitcal Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel directly from Fisher King Press. Phone orders welcomed, Credit Cards accepted. 1-800-228-9316  toll free in the US & Canada, International +1-831-238-7799

Download the

Fisher King Press Newsletter

Fisher King Press Catalog of Publications

Fisher King Press Price List and Order Form