From:
Psychoanalysts Talk Back
To:
All psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic clinicians, anyone interested in psychoanalysis
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December 23, 2024
Today marks the 444th day of the genocide in Palestine. We are appalled that for over 15 months our psychoanalytic institutions, societies, and professional bodies have refused to take an ethical stance against the genocide and the varied crimes against humanity committed by Israel and its occupying forces.
Even as organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières, B’tselem, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and Francesca Albenese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories are reaching a consensus that the violence in Palestine is genocidal and that Israel is practicing apartheid in the Occupied Territories, we are not aware of a single psychoanalytic organization that has issued a statement condemning the violence and barbarity of Israel's expansionist project, undertaken with the United States', the UK's, and Germany's unabashed support; its vicious murderousness of Palestinian life, which has wiped out entire generational lines; its purposeful targeting of children; its brazen disregard of international law; its hateful and deliberate destruction of infrastructure, which makes survival in the land of Palestine untenable; its targeted killing of medical staff, mental health professionals including psychologists and psychiatrists, and of journalists; and the horrific acceleration of climate change due to the tons of emissions caused by the bombardments and ground invasion.
Despite the fact that this barbarity is being live-streamed, making this the most documented-in-real-time genocide in human history, our professional organizations have failed us by not naming what's occurring -naming being one of the utmost values of psychoanalysis. Not only have they proceeded with business as usual, betraying some of the most important ethical principles of bearing witness, they have used psychoanalytic concepts (such as "splitting") to actively deter - and even pathologize - psychoanalysts from using analytic ideas to understand this unfettered violence.
If no one else will do it, Psychoanalysts Talk Back will.
We invite psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic candidates, psychoanalytic therapists, and anyone interested in psychoanalysis to sign this letter in order to: express how heartbroken and outraged we are by the ongoing and horrific conditions of death and land theft in Gaza and by our institutions' lack of outspoken opposition; stand in solidarity with our Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Yemeni colleagues, who have been made to watch their organizations mount events that justify Israeli violence, abandoning ethical commitments to human rights; and recognize the pain experienced by many of our anti-Zionist Jewish colleagues.
DEI initiatives that address gender, sexuality, and racism within psychoanalysis mean nothing as long as the field remains silent regarding Israel's genocide. Never has psychoanalysis felt and acted more white: this is the time to distance the field from imperialist, racist, colonial, and ethnonationalist projects. We demand that:
Formal psychoanalytic bodies issue statements condemning the genocide of the Palestinian people and demanding an end to the genocide now.
Psychoanalytic organizations urge their members to be attentive to anti-Palestinian hatred in the clinic and in our institutional environments. It is not enough to issue broad and generic calls for civility on both sides. We want to see phrasing that uses the words "Palestine" and "Palestinian" - words rarely uttered in psychoanalytic spaces -and which acknowledges the uneven harm.
The IPA as the formal analytic body and individual and Psychoanalytic Societies Institutions pledge to uphold the principles of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) as outlined by USACBI or PACBI and as called for by Palestinian civil society and cultural organizations.
A formal apology be issued by the IPA to Palestinian, Lebanese, Yemeni, Iranian, and Syrian colleagues acknowledging the deafening silence that has isolated and pathologized them and their acts of resistance.
Psychoanalytic training sites actively consider the particular needs of Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) candidates, graduates, and faculty at this historical moment, and materially address harms institutional silence has caused them.
Professional listservs stop censoring speech about Palestine and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and that expectations be set for a professional and respectful attitude being extended to those concerned about anti-Palestinian violence in the region.
Signed,