Hitchcock’s horrendous Holocaust film

In Claude Lanzmann’s “The last of the unjust” we receive a rare glimpse into the perspective of Benjamin Murmelstein, the last head of the Jewish Council in Theresienstadt, whom many saw as a collaborator. Murmelstein comes across in all his complexity; a rabbi and intellectual, a learned scholar, knowledgeable but not fully reliable, telling his story, with conviction, exemplifying that all victims were martyrs, but not all martyrs were saints.

Theresienstadt. Women and children in prison uniforms.
Yad Vashem 

The cast of the children's opera Brundibar by Hans Krasa.
The opera was performed 55 times in Theresienstadt. 

“Memory of the Camps” is the unbearable horror ‘movie’, narrated by Trevor Howard, that Hitchcock could not bear himself to watch. It truly IS unbearable.

It forces disgrace on the coldest of evil, and shame on Holocaust denial.

From 'Memory of the Camps' 

After you watch it, I suggest you listen to Patrick Gordon Walker reporting from the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. From the horrors of human evil and of human suffering, from the ashes of the mass-graves, spring the grains of Hope.

The Nazi evil of the Holocaust forced human beings to encounter the unimaginable, turning many of those who did survive the Shoah, that grand projection of shadow, of dehumanization, into mere silhouettes.

And yet, there were those that rose from the ashes, who fleshed out the silhouettes, who stepped out of the machinery of evil, forever wounded and scarred, yet embracing life.

Book Review: Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return

Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return by Erel Shalit

A review by Marcella London, author and poet

Erel Shalit’s Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return touched me deeply, deep into the waters of my soul. From that ocean, I will choose to mention a few of the many emerging waves.

The book traces historical events, in which the longing for home can be felt: a real home, a collective home, and the personal and internal home that the author aims at, by means of the narrator of the book, Eliezer Shimeoni.

This is his private odyssey, but in distinction from Ulysses, he chooses not to relate to the siren’s song as merely a danger, but rather as a call to make the journey towards the soul’s home.

Erel Shalit’s narrative has a unique, fascinating and powerful style, which touches you strongly. Particularly, he has a way of leading the reader to grasp complicated historical processes with unusual ease.

Interwoven in a narrative of fiction and seeming non-fiction, we meet familiar figures from philosophy and literature, such as Kafka, who asked his friend Max Brod to burn his books after his death, a wish which, to the great fortune of humankind, the latter did not fulfill. In Requiem the author brings us both to Heine and the burning of books, and back to the fate of Hananiah ben Terdion in the second century.

The story of the second-hand bookshop reminded me of Borges’s famous library; Shimeoni also found refuge in the many old books: “The old bookshop granted an escape into a world of history books and timeworn atlases in which he could sail across the sea of time and continents, where fear and excitement and heroism were free and asked no price. It was a world of books that he could browse but never buy, an odyssey that could only be traveled, but never owned.”

I was carried away by the ruminations of the protagonist who wonders if he was “a mere actor in the play? What he believed to be his own, free and individual will, his personal determination, his choice and his decisions, his own peculiar thoughts, were they nothing but the manifestation of his allocated role, the text he had been given, none of his own creation?” And, “Without soul, there is no water and no liquid, no stream, no steam, and perhaps also no dream, he told himself, almost speaking out loudly. Soul does not have material substance,” says Shimeoni in the book, in his Zen-like reflections. And he is reminded of the film Smoke, based on a script by Paul Auster. The film tells the story of Sir Walter Raleigh who asked Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century, “How do you weigh smoke?” Clever as she was, she supposedly answered him, “How can you weigh smoke? It’s like weighing air or someone’s soul,” we are told. But the narrator contemplates and eventually provides us with the surprising answer.

In Requiem we are presented with two distinct styles of writing, so that we are almost led to believe that two different authors wrote the book. We find not only the narrator of a story, but also the spiritual and lyrical face of the author.

I highly recommend this fascinating and important book, which presents the reader with the simultaneously intellectual and emotional landscapes of Erel Shalit.

Marcela London, poet, author of The Beginning Was Longing (Hebrew, 2013)

TITLE: Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return
AUTHOR: Erel Shalit
PUBLISHER: Fisher King Press
ISBN: 978-1926715032
Available in English and Hebrew Editions, at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and directly from Fisher King Press.

Book Review: The Dream and Its Amplification

Book Review: The Dream and Its Amplification by Erel Shalit and Nancy Swift Furlotti

by Robin B. Zeiger, Ph.D.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of a dream. As a psychologist, avid dreamer, and writer, I remain in awe of the power and depth of dream analysis. I invite my patients, supervisees, friends, and family to share dreams. And I welcome my dream world into my heart and soul.

Again and again, dream work offers a window into the personal and collective soul. The Dream and Its Amplification by Erel Shalit and Nancy Swift Furlotti , Fisher King Press, 2013, is an excellent tribute to this deep soul-work from a Jungian perspective. Shalit and Furlotti present us with a series of essays by experts in the field. Yet, rather than reading a dry text filled with psychological jargon, we are treated to writings that are aesthetically pleasing. The chapters are short and appear deceptively simple. Yet, as I digested the book, I often felt as if I was reading good poetry. The words and images continue to resonate; beckoning us to travel deeper within.

At times Jungian writers are accused of being too esoteric. The writing is filled with jargon and hard to digest concepts. In contrast, Shalit and Furlotti frame the book with an excellent introduction to dream analysis easily understandable and translatable to real life. We are offered a window into the world of dream amplification and active imagination. This is followed by fourteen chapters authored by a diversity of writers. The reader is introduced to symbols, archetypes, personal stories, diverse dreams, and poetry. There are also several inspiring illustrations. I am looking forward to referring patients and supervisees, as well as colleagues to this collection.

One of my favorite images from the book comes from a chapter entitled The Dream as Gnostic Myth by Ronald Schenk Schenk reflects on the journey:

For the gnostic, the present state is only a sojourn, and a journey of transformation is required. The journey is one of travail, involving a wandering through the unredeemed world, often imaged as following a meandering trail, gathering lost or forgotten “sparks” or aspects of the soul. The journey need not be one of space, but rather than of time, representing stages of transformation.

I invite the professional and the lay-person alike to join the journey of dream amplification via this excellent collection of essays.

Robin B. Zeiger received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1985 from the University of Illinois of Chicago. She has practiced as a clinical psychologist and supervisor and is currently training as a Jungian analyst in Israel. Robin enjoys dialoguing and journeying with her dreams via art, writing, and sand-play.

The Dream and its Amplification, and other books by Erel Shalit, can be purchased at Fisher King Press, Amazon and other book sellers.

The Last of the Unjust

Lanzmann and Murmelstein

January 27 is the international Holocaust Remembrance Day. Many cinemas will show Claude Lanzman's recent film "The Last of the Unjust", in which he interviews Benjamin Murmelstein, President of the Jewish Council in the Theresienstadt concentration camp ghetto. The crucial question of the role of the Judenrat is brought to the foreground. This question was raised, as well, by Hannah Arendt, and though I personally am greatly appreciative of much of her important philosophical work, I cannot accept her critical position vis-a-vis those Jews who so cleverly and ruthlessly were exploited by the Nazis, put in untenable positions, often finding themselves between collaboration and trying to save as many victims as possible.
Watch the trailer of Lanzmann's film.

“Shoah” is a masterwork of reflexive filmmaking, in which the conditions of its production are inseparable from its artistic and moral substance. The subject of “Shoah” is, as Lanzmann has said, death. The subject of “The Last of the Unjust” is life. The miracle that it conjures is that of survival. It’s a miracle that anyone came out of the camps alive. It’s a miracle that Murmelstein, in his position of terrifying proximity to barbaric overlords, was able to save as many Jews as he did—and to save himself. It’s a miracle that Judaism itself, as a religion and an ongoing element of history, survived.
From Richard Brody's post in The New Yorker. Read the full article.

The Tranquility of Terror

Theresienstadt was established as a 'model ghetto', "in order to save face in regards to the outside world" (Eichmann). The first deportation to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto too place Nov. 24, 1941.

While the Jews in Theresienstadt gave manifestation to the height of spiritual survival in the shadow of evil, it was, and was meant to be a hoax from the beginning.

The perversity of deception in the service of evil compounded into the dust of the extermination camps, but on the way, “to the East,” as the Nazis deceptively called the transports to the death camps, Theresienstadt served as a model of deception.

The Red Cross visited the 'town' in June 1944, prior to which the Nazis intensified deportations, and the ghetto was "beautified." Some inmates were dressed up and told to stand at strategic places along the carefully designated route. Shop windows along the route were filled with goods for the day, and the day's abundance in the candy shop window made life in Terezin seem sweet.

The day of the visit

Not the day of the visit

The Red Cross reported dryly that while war time conditions made all life difficult, life at Terezin was acceptable given all of the pressures. The Red Cross concluded that the Jews were being treated all right.

Inmates in Theresienstadt - also not the day of the visit

Approximately 158,000 Jews were brought to Theresienstadt. Approximately 90,000 were transported onwards to the extermination camps, of whom about 4,800 survived. About 35,500 died of hunger and illness in the ghetto (among them my great-grandmother).

Of the 12,121 children (born 1928 and later) brought to Theresienstadt, 9,001 were sent to the death camps. 325 survived.

When Helen Deutsch, the psychoanalyst who had left Vienna for the United States in 1935, wrote her important 1942 paper “Some forms of emotional disturbance and their relationship to schizophrenia,” introducing the concept of the as-if personality, the poet Leo Strauss wrote, in Theresienstadt, what in its subtle simplicity to me is one of the most spectacular poems, ‘Als-Ob,’ As-If. The English translation from the German is from Requiem: A Tale of Exile and Return:


I know a little tiny town
A city just so neat
I call it not by name
but call the town As-if

Not everyone may enter
Into this special place
You have to be selected
From among the As-if race

And there they live their life
As-if a life to live
Enjoying every rumor
As-if the truth it were

You lie down on the floor
As-if it was a bed
And think about your loved one
As if she weren’t yet dead

One bears the heavy fate
As-if without a sorrow
And talks about the future
As if there was – tomorrow

Erel Shalit's books can be purchased at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Fisher King Press.

Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond (edited by Mark Winborn)

'Emerging'
by ©Susan Bostrom-Wong

'Emerging' appears on the cover of Enemy, Cripple, Beggar. Another incredible painting by Susan Bostrom-Wong will appear on the cover of the forthcoming volume of Fisher King Review, edited by Mark Winborn.

Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond

Mark Winborn (Editor), Fisher King Press (forthcoming, early 2014)

Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and Beyond brings together Jungian analysts and psychoanalysts from across the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Jung’s concept of participation mystique is used as a starting point for an in depth exploration of ‘shared realities’ in the analytic setting and beyond. The clinical, narrative, and theoretical discussions move through such related areas as: projective identification, negative coniunctio, reverie, intersubjectivity, the interactive field, phenomenology, neuroscience, the transferential chimera, shamanism, shared reality of place, borderland consciousness, and mystical participation. This unique collection of essays bridges theoretical orientations and includes some of the most original analytic writers of our time (approximately 320 pages).

Contents:

Introduction: An Overview of Participation Mystique 

     Mark Winborn

Negative Coniunctio: Envy and Sadomasochism in Analysis

     Pamela Power

Trauma, Participation Mystique, Projective Identification and Analytic Attitude
     Marcus West

Watching the Clouds: Analytic Reverie and Participation Mystique
     Mark Winborn

Modern Kleinian Therapy, Jung’s Participation Mystique, and the Projective Identification Process
     Robert Waska

Songs Never Heard Before: Listening and Living Differently in Shared Realities
     Dianne Braden

Variants of Mystical Participation
     Michael Eigen

Participation Mystique in Peruvian Shamanism
     Deborah Bryon

Healing Our Split: Participation Mystique and C.G. Jung
     Jerome Bernstein

The Transferential Chimera and Neuroscience
     François Martin-Vallas

Toward a Phenomenology of Participation Mystique and a Reformulation of Jungian Philosophical Anthropology
     John White

Conclusion
     Mark Winborn

A Year of Wisdom

@Benjamin Shiff: Doves of Peace

 

 

"Does not wisdom call? And understanding put forth her voice? She stands at the top of high places by the way, where the paths meet. She cries at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the entrance of the doors. To you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. O you simple, understand wisdom; and, you fools, be you of an understanding heart." (Proverbs 8)

@Susan Bostrom Wong

Joseph Campbell says,

The mirror, reflecting the goddess and drawing her forth from the august repose of her divine non-manifestation, is symbolic of the world, the field of the reflected image. Therein divinity is pleased to regard its own glory, and this pleasure is itself inducement to the act of manifestation or “creation.” 

"When the mirror is dim, the soul is unclean.” (Japanese proverb)

@Benjamin Shiff: Magic City

Erel Shalit titles 15-45% off directly from Fisher King Press

"The Hero and His Shadow- A Necessary Companion to Ari Shavit's 'My Promised Land'"

Psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote in The Red Book of the distinction between “The Spirit of the Times” and “The Spirit of the Depths”. We see this vividly demonstrated when we put Ari Shavit’s acclaimed new book My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel alongside Erel Shalit’s classic work, The Hero and His Shadow: Psychopolitical Aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel.

The former takes us through the history of the heroic creation of Israel, including the darkest “shadow” behaviors of the Jewish state in the 1948 massacre of the Arabs of Lydda.

In the latter work, Erel Shalit tells us why.

This is no simplistic psychological analysis. The brilliance of this Israeli Jungian analyst is that he offers no easy solutions, plumbing the paradox of the necessary heroic identity of the Jewish state, and yet, around every corner is the shadow of every hero: the beggar, the frightened one, the part of all of us that is dependent on forces outside of our control.

It is also very important to note that Erel Shalit’s book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the inner workings of the soul. On one level Israel is the backdrop for the author to explore how shadow, myth, and projection work in all of us, regardless of our life circumstance, nationality, environment, or history. It even includes a comprehensive glossary of Jungian terms that has some of the best definitions I have ever encountered, and hence a find for readers new to Jung.

And, of course, for people who are fascinated by the scope and depth of the story of Israel, this is a simply great read. It stands alone, but read as a companion to Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land, Erel Shalit’s Hero and His Shadow gives us The Spirit of the Depths in all its dimension. We may not be able to resolve the Arab/Israeli conflict, but we can learn many things from this brave, complex Israeli author, that we can apply to healing the inner and outer wars in our own lives.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Clark-Stern, author of On the Doorstep of the Castle, Out of the Shadows, and Soul Stories.

American Icarus and America on the Couch by Pythia Peay

Pythia Peay is an acclaimed author and Huffington Post and Psychology Today blogger on psychology, spirituality and the American Psyche.

She is the author of forthcoming AMERICAN ICARUS: A MEMOIR OF FATHER AND COUNTRY and AMERICA ON THE COUCH: PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON AMERICAN POLITICS AND CULTURE

American Icarus: A Memoir of Father and Country is the psychobiography of my greatest generation father, Joe Carroll – a flier, a farmer, a dreamer, and an incurable alcoholic – and the American myths that shaped his epic life. In search of the father I’d never really known, I interviewed psychologists and historians, and set out to learn about the people and places who made him and the times he lived in: Altoona and the Pennsylvania Railroad, World War II and the Air Transport Command in Brazil, Buenos Aires, the start-up airline El Al in newly independent Israel, TWA and 1950s Missouri and the cultural upheavals that would drive us apart, Mexico and Corpus Christi, Texas.

America on the Couch: Psychological Perspectives on American Politics and Culture is an inspiring and enlightening collection of interviews with some of the world’s leading psychologists on the historical, archetypal and psychological background of such enduring issues as immigration, war and violence, addiction, the presidency, American-Israeli relations, the economy, the environment, and the classic myths of independence and individuality that shaped my restless, sky-faring father and his homeland. Contributors include James Hillman, Marion Woodman, Erel Shalit, Tom Singer, Andrew Samuels, Mary Pipher, Robert Jay Lifton, Judith Jordan, Nancy Furlotti, Harriet Lerner, Ginette Paris, Luigi Zoja and many more.

1950, Joe Caroll, Pythia's father, in Israel,
standing in front of El Al Airline's first DC 4.

Visit Pythia's Facebook page.

To pre-order your copies of American Icarus and America on the Couch, please visit the Indiegogo site, where you can view the book video, and a "Gallery" of over forty photos and three excerpts from each book.

Read one of Pythia's classic interviews on the American psyche was with Jungian thinker James Hillman on a "Shift in Ages," and his vision of America's future.