{"id":444,"date":"2024-06-01T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/?p=444"},"modified":"2024-05-29T17:54:00","modified_gmt":"2024-05-29T16:54:00","slug":"antisemitism-in-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/2024\/06\/01\/antisemitism-in-therapy\/","title":{"rendered":"Antisemitism in therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u2018The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) has apologised for dropping an article about Jewish trauma resulting from Hamas\u2019s assault on Israel<\/a> on 7 October from its magazine over \u201ca concern around sensitivities\u201d. Guardian Newspaper 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Antisemitism, the assumption of inferiority based on race, has recently (and yet again) joined a wide range of other forms of prejudice – race, sexual orientation, gender – and requires our attention, not least since our profession concerns itself with social justice.\u00a0\u00a0Much has been written \u2013 some contributions more competently than others – however given the current situation in the Middle East it is yet again in the foreground of our and many of our clients\u2019 thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No practitioner can remove themselves from the endless feeds on social media, the daily news bulletins and, in some cases, graffiti on walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How should we work with relationships which may be transcultural, one Jewish one not, Jewish couples and those who have strong views on the current war?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If working with more religiously observant Jewish people an interesting paper about\u00a0coping strategies is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Antisemitism is just part of my day-to-day life\u2019: Coping mechanisms adopted by Orthodox Jews in North London Maya Flax Volume 27, Issue 3<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/02697580211006663<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, before the current conflict NUS (National Union of Students) president Megan Dunn sited: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u2026a poster saying \u2018Hitler was right\u2019 on campus, and people tweeting\u2026 to say that Jewish people should be \u2018popped back in the oven\u2019\u2026 graphics\u2026 which call Jews \u2018Zionist racist scum\u2019 and suggests the Holocaust was \u2018invented\u2019. The people who write blogs that 9\/11 was an \u2018insurance scam\u2019 by \u2018a secret Jewish network\u2019. Those who write on Facebook that \u2018Adolf and Co should have finished the job properly\u2019, pose questions like \u2018why stop at 6 million?\u2019 and the artists who depict Jews as thieves with big noses.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this relatively recent post with the horrifying events that took place on October 7th<\/sup> how badly have things developed from then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those of us who work within the Jewish community and with Jewish relationships or mixed faith ones will be only too aware of the trauma which comes into the room. This is attached to whatever the present issue is and merges, and as such requires much patience and exploration by the therapist. However, let\u2019s assume for a moment, the therapist is human! And may feel strongly about the Israeli, Zionist, and Jewish position or indeed the position of the Palestinians in Gaza? Therapists are often faced with clients who may voice views in opposition to their therapist, how then shall we navigate this? What do we voice, when do we remain silent, and if we add comments to any social media platform do clients see this and what does our code of ethics say about this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This becomes yet another facet of therapeutic work, where the therapist holds ground, navigates couples in conflict and then might be asked for a steer to understand the relationship differently. We need to consider if the \u2018conflict\u2019 spoken or unspoken resides between the clients and the therapist. If the conflict is too great do, we then \u2018out\u2019 ourselves and refer on? What are the protocols for this? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Might it be accurate to say that all therapists have innate or acquired biases? And that these do not de facto have a place in the therapy room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As mentioned in Anti-Semitism and its mental health effects by Professor Kate Miriam Loewenthal (Royal College of Psychiatrists 2017)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responses to anti-Semitism<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as experiencing unpleasant feelings, elaborate social psychological experimentation has demonstrated a wide range of coping strategies, and has emphasised the influence of responses to anti-Semitism on the further behaviour of the persecutor\/s. Dion and colleagues implemented such an interactional approach to the study of impact of prejudice studied the impact of perceived prejudice upon stereotypic self-evaluations, self-esteem, and affect. They thought it important to study dynamic interactional processes, as for example in Bettelheim\u2019s hypothesis that responses to prejudice may heighten prejudice. Victim groups studied were Jews, blacks, Chinese and women.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neves and Davies commented recently that when working culturally sensitively when population groups not only have\u00a0historical issues but also have current minority stress can result in PTSD. Might this also be true for therapists? This issue is, in my view, key to professionalism, the attention to transference\/countertransference and the personhood and self-care\u00a0of the therapist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judi Keshet-Orr<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founder & Course Director<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) has apologised for dropping an article about Jewish trauma resulting from Hamas\u2019s assault on Israel on 7 October from its magazine over \u201ca concern around sensitivities\u201d. Guardian Newspaper 2024 Antisemitism, the assumption of inferiority based on race, has recently (and yet again) joined a wide range of other forms … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,23,31,3,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":445,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosexualtraining.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}