Creativity and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at Times of War, Exile, and Trauma

Rony Alfandary, Ph.D., is a clinical social worker and senior lecturer at the School of Social Work at the University of Haifa, Israel. He served as Director of the Post-Graduate Programme in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at Bar-Ilan University until 2022. He is the author of twelve books, including prose and poetry.

“Rony Alfandary, whose previous book powerfully traced the legacy of his own family’s experiences during Nazi times, has written another open and compelling text, this time developing his ideas on the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Israel. With the aid of semi-fictionalised clinical ‘cases’ along with literary and social analysis, Alfandary explores how psychoanalytic practice can articulate the fraught context of one of the most trauma-saturated communities in the world. The book raises issues around trauma, inheritance, antisemitism and war and will be of value to all who are interested in the practice and politics of psychoanalysis.” - Stephen Frosh, Emeritus Professor, Birkbeck, University of London“Alfandary’s book, drawing on decades of experience in the shadow of war, offers an original and illuminating interweaving of two healing threads, ethics and creativity, forming a generous, lucid, and deeply human guide to psychotherapy, trauma, and recovery. Through Alfandary’s remarkable gift for storytelling, it stands as a compassionate testimony to the enduring human capacity for repair and to its hard-won restoration along the psychotherapeutic path in times of trauma and exile.” - Prof. Roth Merav (PhD): A training psychoanalyst and cultural researcher, University of Haifa, International Sigourney award winner, 2024“Rony Alfandary, a prominent figure in Israel's mental health field, combines in this powerful book his insights regarding attributes of Israeli society – the shadow of the Holocaust, experiences of migration, the traumatic impact of wars and terrorism, political struggles between democratic and authoritarian forces – with his thinking about the universal aspects of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and of clinical social work. His emphasis on the creative significance of psychotherapy is expressed in unique case studies and in explorations of the potential contribution of literature and music.” - Emanuel Berman, Ph.D., Israel Psychoanalytic Society

• Introduction1. Listening to a Whisper: Psychoanalytic Social Work and the Ethics of Representing Inner Experience2. Fiction, Truth, and Authenticity: Navigating the Ethical Borderlands of Therapeutic Writing3. Threshold Encounters: The Paradox of Beginnings in Psychoanalytic psychotherapy4. The Supervisory Quartet: How Institutional Containment Transforms Psychoanalytic Supervision in Multicultural Settings5. The Contained and the Container: Erotic Transference as Annihilation in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy6. The Secret Wound of Exile: Literature and Film as Analytic Third in Psychoanalytic Therapy7. When Fathers Fall Silent: Music as a Transitional Object in Adolescent Response to Paternal Trauma8. Echoes Across Generations: Psychoanalysis, War Trauma, and Post-Memory in Israel9. The Psychoanalytic Geography of Exile: Home, Loss, and Creative Return10. We Do Not Want to Be Ruled Like This: Creativity and Public Protest11. Beyond Professional Boundaries: Antisemitism and 7th October, 2023About the AuthorFurther Reading Index