Jackie Charbit-Middleton’s 16^th April 2024 contribution to New Associations

Black Lives Matter – but not Palestinian Lives

It took a very long time for the psychoanalytic world to begin to address racism within our profession in the UK.

But truly what could be more racist than the avoidance of facing the reality of the genocide in Gaza and avoidance of speaking out about this catastrophe openly within our organisations? Having dialogue and not being censored. Of course we are fearful, fearful of causing upset, fearful of causing hurt, fearful of being cancelled, fearful of losing status, but nothing like the fear for one’s life, for the lives of one’s family and for the future on one’s homeland.

The attempt to annihilate Palestinians is happening today, and has been happening since 1948.* There is nowhere that is safe for Palestinians. Their homeland has been taken over and the current aim of Netanyahu appears to be to kill whoever and whatever remains so that there is no Palestine for Palestinians.

Surely this warrants our serious and urgent attention.

A friend pointed me in the direction of the history of the Deutsche Psychoanalytische Gesellschaft, “the genocide of Jewish people led to a fundamental collapse of psychoanalysis in Germany. ….. It took years and the work of generations of analysts to alleviate the burden of our Nazi legacy in order to be able to work through shame and guilt … to reclaim psychoanalysis proper …”

Our profession appears to be avoiding speaking about the reality of the genocide of Palestinian people and the impact this is having within our profession today.

Silence is the real crime (Segal.1987). And turning a blind eye is collusion. As Steiner (1979) points out in his paper, everyone knows.

Jackie Charbit-Middleton Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist email: charbitmiddleton@gmail.com

* See documentary Blue Box (2021) for historical context prior to 1948