Psychoanalytic and Group Analytic Reflections on War, Trauma and Resilience The Courage to Remain Human After October 7

SECTION 1: Clinical Perspectives  1. Pogrom Mentality  2. The Trauma of Evil and the Restorative Function of the Good Object  3. Weaving Traumatic Time - When Life is Buried under Death  4. Silencing Amidst the Unbearable  5. The Law of Brotherhood: an Ethical Injunction and Therapeutic Factor in Analytic Groups  6. Dancing on the Titanic: My Experiences as Group Analyst Since October 7  7. Groups Under Pressure  8. Traumatic Games: Dissociation in Action in non-PTSD Israeli Soldiers  9. On a Razor’s Edge: Trauma, Meaning and Psychic Motion in the Analytic Group SECTION 2: Between Collapse and Dialogue  10. Holding the Rupture: Jewish - Palestinian Therapists Group Work During an Assault on Humanity  11. Group-as-Whole Effects on Greek Co-Facilitators in International Online Large Groups on Antisemitism  12. Better than TV: a Session in the Life of a Group-Analytic Group at War  13. Managing Sociopolitical Divisions: Improving Co-Existence in Small and Large Groups  SECTION 3: Societal and Historical Dimension of Trauma  14. Field Observers - The Cassandras of Our Time  15. Why I am pro-Palestinian? Why I am pro-Israeli?  16. Witnessing and Its Implication - in Personal and Collective Memory  17. Feminism, Antisemitism and Authoritarianism on the Left  18. No Insurance Against Hatred of Jews - 7 October 2023 and the Trauma of Three Generations 

Biography

Liat Warhaftig Aran is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and group analyst. She is a faculty member at the Tel- Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Israeli Institute for Group Analysis.

Martin Mahler is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Prague, president of the Czech Psychoanalytic Society and a training and supervising analyst for the IPA. He co-founded the Raphael Institute, focused on the prevention and treatment of trauma, especially in the context of collective violence.

"This courageous volume arrives at a moment when psychoanalytic thought is most urgently needed—and most at risk of ideological capture. By placing Israeli and Palestinian voices side by side, and by insisting on witnessing over enactment, the editors and contributors model precisely the capacity they theorize: remaining human in the face of evil. The book's strength lies in its refusal of both false symmetries and premature resolutions, offering instead clinical depth, theoretical originality, and an unflinching confrontation with trauma, antisemitism, and moral collapse. An essential contribution to psychoanalytic thinking in dark times."

Prof. Aner Govrin, Editor of the series "Routledge Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis". 

"Drawing on powerful clinical, theoretical, and social analyses, this volume offers an unusually nuanced psychoanalytic and group-analytic engagement with the aftermath of October 7. Grounded in lived clinical experience and rigorous reflection, the book bears witness to dissociation, loss, moral injury, and enduring disintegration alongside fragile efforts at mourning, recognition, and repair. It stands as a sober and courageous testament to what it means to remain human amid devastation that reshapes inner and collective life."

Galit Atlas, Ph.D., faculty NYU Postdoctoral Program for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, author of Emotional Inheritance. 

"This is an urgent book for our times of war and destructiveness. Chapters by Israeli, Palestinian, and international psychoanalysts and group analysts examine the psychological consequences of the traumatic events following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th 2023 and the Gaza War that followed. These challenging papers confront trauma, violence, and loss while offering important insights for psychoanalytic thought and clinical practice, and holding open the possibility of hope and a path forward." 

Joseph Dodds Ph.D., University of New York in Prague and the Czech Psychoanalytical Society.