Tisha B’Av, “Ghetto Day,” and producing “authentic” Jews at postwar Jewish summer camps

The postwar period brought sweeping changes for American Jews. Communal socioeconomic transitions and the aftermath of the Holocaust triggered intense anxieties among Jewish leaders regarding the preservation of so-called Jewish “authenticity,” and to an increased focus on the moulding of American Jewish youth. This article considers how Jewish summer camps used Tisha B’Av and secular, alternative memorial days, to lead campers toward various, ideologically imbued visions of Jewish authenticity. Through fostering an aura of tragedy in what was otherwise a world of play, songs, and enjoyment, Jewish educators used memorial days as transformative educational tools. Though camps’ ceremonies looked remarkably similar, often including a carefully crafted sombre atmosphere, dirges, and responsive readings, the message of the days proved malleable to different ideological perspectives. This article considers how Zionist, Yiddishist, Reform and Conservative camps came to use memorial days to produce “real,” “ideal,” or “authentic” Jews in accordance with their ideological visions in the decades immediately following the Holocaust.     

Tele‐analysis: the use of media technology in psychotherapy and its impact on the therapeutic relationship

A growing number of approaches in psychotherapy make use of internet‐ and other media‐based interactions. This paper discusses the impact on the therapist‐client relationship of using media technology and gives an overview of the current state of the debate. It is suggested that the technical conditions of internet‐based interactions produce new forms of social relationships that differ significantly from face‐to‐face‐interactions and that unconscious, nonverbal cues get lost. Research on the therapeutic interaction making use of ‘discourse linguistic’ methods is presented. The loss of nonverbal cues has implications for psychotherapy in general and especially for the treatment of patients who have difficulties relying on a secure therapeutic relationship. Emotional security in interactional relationships is transmitted to a much greater extent by nonverbal cues than by verbal content; psychoanalytic methods are specialized to refer to this level of interaction. Two alternative scenarios are discussed based on the psychoanalytic theories of Winnicott and Lacan: the risk of an illusionary, idealized image of the other and the possibility that cyberspace can be used for psychological development as a transitional space.     

The effects of ventriloquism on the right-side advantage for verbal material

Subjects were asked to recall one of two simultaneous messages coming from hidden loudspeakers situated either at 90° or at 45° from the median plane to the left and to the right. They were told that the messages were coming from two visible dummy loudspeakers which were also situated either at 90° or at 45°. Pre-stimulus cueing of the side to be recalled was given. Significant right-side advantage was obtained in the 90° real-fictitious condition, not in the other conditions. These results show that right-side advantage can be obtained with presentation over loudspeakers and unilateral recall, and dismiss a purely structural or purely cognitive view of lateral asymmetries in audition. Role of structural and cognitive factors is discussed.     

Factors of hemifield differences in form discrimination

The influence of some process-limiting variables on hemifield differences for nonsense shapes in a "same-different" classification task was examined. "Different" responses, but not "same," did show systematic effects. Weakly discriminable and unfamiliar shapes which were presented successively yielded a significant left-hemifield advantage, while highly discriminable and more familiar shapes presented simultaneously yielded a nonsignificant right-hemifield advantage. Discriminability, considered independently of the other variables, had effects in opposite directions: low discriminability tended to favor more the right than the left hemifield in each experiment, but the right hemifield more than the left when the comparison was made between experiments. The results are discussed in terms of the spatial-frequency model (Sergent, 1982b, 1983) and the analytic-holistic distinction.     

The latency complex: the dead hand of anti‐development

It is common knowledge that the same phenomena can be viewed in a variety of ways. This paper considers the implications of a constellation observed in some adult patients who have increasingly reminded the author of some of the children of latency age with whom he has also worked. In the literature these patients may also have been thought about in terms of ‘defences of the self’ (Fordham), patients who are ‘difficult to reach’ (Joseph), ‘psychic retreats’ (Steiner), and those who make ‘attacks on linking’ (Bion). They may equally be considered in terms of schizoid, narcissistic or borderline personalities, or as showing features on the autistic spectrum, such as mindlessness and extreme obsessionality. Writers such as Helene Deutsch with her concept of an ‘as‐if personality’, Winnicott with his ‘false self’, and Rosenfeld, discussing the split‐off parts of the personality in narcissistic patients, have also offered much to think about in their consideration of some of these phenomena. This paper proposes yet another vertex – the author's own imaginative conjecture – that is by no means mutually exclusive of any of these others.