Making up ‘national trauma’ in Israel: From collective identity to collective vulnerability
Galia Plotkin-Amrami and José Brunner
Social Studies of Science, Volume 45, Issue 4
First published online June 25, 2015
Contents
Abstract
We sketch a variety of institutional, discursive, professional, and personal ‘vectors’, dating back to the 1980s, in order to explain how ‘national trauma’ was able to go from a cultural into a professional category in Israeli mental health during the Al-Aqsa Intifada (2000–2005). Our genealogy follows Ian Hacking’s approach to transient mental illnesses, both illustrating its fertility and expanding its horizon. Thus, we also explore the dynamics that developed in the Israeli mental health community with the advent of ‘national trauma’: while the vast majority of Israeli psychologists and psychiatrists did not adopt the category, they embraced much of its underlying logic, establishing a link between Israeli identity and the mental harm said to be caused by Palestinian terror. Remarkably, the nexus of national identity and collective psychic vulnerability also prompted the cooperation of Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli mental health scholars seeking to explore the psychological effect that the minority status of Israeli Palestinians had on them during the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
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Biographies
Galia Plotkin-Amrami is an anthropologist specializing in historical-ethnographic research of psychological and psychiatric knowledge. She currently teaches at The Jaim and Joan Constantiner School of Education at Tel Aviv University. She received her PhD from The Porter School of Cultural Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her research interests focus on the interactions between the therapeutic discourse, national ethos, religion, and ethics. Her articles were published/accepted for publication in Social Identities, Transcultural Psychiatry, Israeli Sociology, and Anthropology & Education Quarterly.
José Brunner holds a joint appointment as associate professor at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas and the Buchmann Faculty of Law, both at Tel Aviv University. He also is Director of the Eva and Marc Besen Institute for the Study of Historical Consciousness, where he edits the international journal History & Memory. His most recent book is Die Politik des Traumas – Gewalterfahrungen und psychische Leid in den USA, in Deutschland und im Israel/Palästina Konflikt (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2014).
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Social Studies of Science
Volume 45, Issue 4
Pages: 525 - 545
Article first published online: June 25, 2015
Issue published: August 2015
Keywordsgenealogy
Ian Hacking
identity and mental health
Israel
national trauma
Palestinian
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