Sunday, March 07, 2010

Who Really Needs The Couch?

Carlo Strenger, the chairman of the clinical graduate psychology program at Tel Aviv University, the author of “The Designed Self”, has a silly op-ed piece in the New York Times on how to reach peace between Jews and Arabs.

It's message:


...it is clear to me as a psychologist that the two sides are steeped in collective trauma, for which the only prescription is diplomatic therapy.


Now, just who needs the couch?

3 comments:

yoni said...

i have no love for strenger and also thought his article was stupid. but i'm not so sure the particular quote you picked to make fun of is so stupid. i mean, i would love to say that i have complete confidence that the military might of israel is capable of dealing with this thing for the next, say, 50 years. but ultimately, don't you think a diplomatic solution- based on a "therapeutic" understanding that we're dealing with a hella lot of trauma here- is a viable suggestion? the fact that the "palestinian" trauma is relatively recently self inflicted and the jewish trauma is an ancient and well-documented fact should of course be taken into account. but the bottom line is we're dealing with kids paying for their parent's mistakes. what do you suggest? the eternal hammer? i can see this, but only until the parties involved agree to honest debate, deliberation and yes, therapy. if the military hammer will get them to this point i'm all for it. but i'm not interested in eternal war. if that's what your god demands, i don't want to play. but since i have a fairly good idea of what OUR god demands, i ask you to re-examine your understanding of it. unless you agree with the "palestinians" claims to be caananites, or some modern rabbis claims that they are "amalekites". both of which are preposterous, sir, and historically unsupportable. as you well know.

YMedad said...

I sent a letter to the paper and if it isn't published in a few days, which it won't, I will thne post it and you'll understansd what I mean and my reasons.

yoni said...

btw: of course the military might of the idf is capable of dealing with the "palestinians". but the "palestinians" are not the enemy, as you well know.