Family Conflict in the Psychopathology of the Kibbutz Child

Over the past twenty years, the author has had a unique opportunity to observe the incidence and nature of emotional disorders exhibited by the child population of about one hundred Israeli kibbutz settlements. An analysis of this clinical material shows that those factors related to disturbed relationships within the kibbutz family far outnumber all other pathogenic elements, both in the frequency of their appearance and the severity of their impact. A distinct pattern of family malfunctioning appears to be the most significant pathogenic element — this despite the centralized caretaking, training, and socializing functions of the kibbutz educators, to whom many tasks ordinarily performed by parents in the traditional family situation, have been delegated.     

Divorce in the Kibbutz: Lessons To Be Drawn

The kibbutz in Israel constitutes one of the few places in Western culture where one is able to examine the essence of an “authentic emotional divorce” because of the minor role of factors that are extraneous to the disruption of the emotional marital attachment itself. This is the case because the kibbutz is a society that is based and functions upon principles that neutralize to a large extent the legal, economic, and co-parenting obstacles to a constructive divorce. Although there are significant differences in the severity of the postdivorce conflict, the divorce crisis is rather similar in kibbutz and non-kibbutz settings regarding both the quality of the emotional responses and the nature of the influencing factors — thus pointing to the ubiquitousness of the human condition.