The tripod of terrorism

Abstract

Violent attacks against innocent civilians occurring on an everyday and global basis have intensified the discourse on terrorism. However, like pornography, terrorism seems readily recognizable but hard to define. The designation is applied to the destructive acts of religious zealots, mentally unstable individuals, terror-inducing despots, separatist militia, and, at times, even legitimate freedom fighters. Ordinary language fails to define terrorism’s nosological circumference and is itself defiled in the process. While acknowledging this denotational conundrum, this paper will propose that the origins of the current mayhem by the radicalized few reside in three geopolitical realms. These include the long shadow of colonialism, the hypocrisy and violence of certain Western foreign policies, and some fundamental problems in the societies that form the crucible of such rage. As a result, ameliorative strategies need to be directed at (and require the collaboration of) all three parties at the root of this tragic and bloody scenario.     

Panel: What could be Jungian about Human Rights work?

The question of whether Jungian analysts should move beyond the consulting room to engage with mental health issues that pertain to the collective is the focus of this paper. Two narratives are presented: one from the view point of a psychiatrist in Occupied Palestine, the other from the conflicted situation which faces an Israeli analyst. Despite the strong ambivalence that is experienced on both sides, there is a willingness to meet and to take a standpoint without necessarily coming to a resolution. A third position is offered by describing experiences from the South African perspective. The African notion of Ubuntu is offered as a moral entry point that states that community goes beyond one's own; from this point of view, Jungian analysts can do no other than to act.     

Intelligence and family marital structure: the case of adolescents from monogamous and polygamous families among Bedouin Arabs in Israel

The levels of intelligence among Bedouin Arab adolescents from monogamous and polygamous families living in the Negev region of Israel were examined. A shortened version of the Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM) test (S. Elbedour, T. J. Bouchard, & Y. Hur, 1997; J. Raven, J. C. Raven, & J. H. Court, 1998) was used to assess intelligence. There were no significant test score differences between adolescents from monogamous families and adolescents from polygamous families. In addition, participants with 2 mothers tended to have lower RPM scores than those with 3 or 4 mothers, and participants with related parents tended to have lower RPM scores than participants with unrelated parents. One major finding of this study is that polygamous family marital structures tended not to have deleterious effects on the Bedouin Arab adolescents' RPM test scores.     

Behavioral problems and scholastic adjustment among Bedouin-Arab children from polygamous and monogamous marital family structures: some developmental considerations

Families in the Bedouin-Arab community in Israel are characterized by monogamous and polygamous marriages. Such diversity in family structure occurs in other parts of the world, yet scant empirical evidence exists to refute or to support the claim that polygamous family structure can be a risk factor for children's school maladjustment and negative developmental outcomes. The purpose of the current study was to test this claim. Participants were 255 3rd-grade children from the Negev Bedouin community in Israel. One hundred fifty-three children came from monogamous families that were characterized by 1 wife (i.e., 1-wife families), and 102 children came from polygamous families consisting of 2 wives (i.e., 2-wife families). Teachers completed the Teacher's Report Form of the Child Behavior Checklist (T. M. Achenback, 1991b). A series of logistic regression analyses, after adjusting for maternal education level, revealed that 2-wife children tended to have higher levels of externalizing problems in general and higher levels of attention problems in particular than did their 1-wife counterparts. Also, 2-wife children had higher rates of school absenteeism and lower levels of overall academic achievement than did 1-wife children. Implications for the Bedouin society are discussed.     

Technical challenges faced by the immigrant psychoanalyst

This paper delineates the technical challenges faced by immigrant analysts. These include (i) maintaining cultural neutrality toward "native" patients, (ii) wondering about the patient's motivations for choosing an ethnoculturally different analyst, (iii) scanning the patient's associations for interethnic clues to deeper transferences, (iv) negotiating the dilemmas posed by conducting analysis in a language other than one's mother tongue, and (v) avoiding shared projections, acculturation gaps, and nostalgic collusion in working with homoethnic immigrant analysands. While by no means irrelevant to the clinical work of non-immigrant analysts, these tasks seem to have a greater importance for the immigrant analyst. Brief clinical vignettes are offered to illustrate these propositions and to highlight the tension between the universality of fundamental intrapsychic and relational configurations, on the one hand, and the nuances of cultural and linguistic context, on the other.