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A Witness with hope

by Áine Hutchinson

Memories of catastrophe can take up to one generation to surface - due to survivors and perpetrators being silenced and silencing themselves, often so as to be able to go living after the catastrophe, and due to histories most often being written by the victors, at least initially. (Lentin, 2010, p.12).

I have visited Palestine three times, and I have struggled in writing this article. I sit with my memories of running with children in refugee camps, harvesting olives with the farmers, and then my third visit with a Mental Health Delegation in March 2023. In finding words I have oscillated between silencing myself, and a fear of being silenced. I have needed time to articulate my mourning for all those killed and traumatised. I have continued my learning so that my moral condemnation can deepen with a moral vision. I am guided by the words of Judith Butler (2023) on condemnation of violence, and mourning of all lives lost, who wrote that a different political morality takes time:

I ask myself whether we can mourn, without qualification, for the lives lost in Israel as well as those lost in Gaza without getting bogged down in debates about relativism and equivalence. Perhaps the wider compass of mourning serves a more substantial ideal of equality, one that acknowledges the equal grievability of lives, and gives rise to an outrage that these lives should not have been lost, that the dead deserved more life and equal recognition for their lives. (Butler, 2023)

I have felt the shackles of the moral confusion that seems central to the deadlocked politics around Israel and Palestine, as explored by the psychoanalytic psychotherapist Martin Kemp (2011). The

unconscious terms of this relationship have hindered genuine progress taking place, and Kemp asserts that this has seen the West take a “bystander” position. Chillingly, he points to the 1930s response to fascism, and how a deeper understanding is needed:

To maximise our potential to contribute towards a just and peaceful future I believe we need to make our own sober assessment of the situation, as Freud did in 1930, unencumbered by misplaced guilt or misguided notions of neutrality, and informed by an universalistic ethic. (2011, p.1)

Since October 7th 2023, a horrific explosion of violence for Israeli and Palestinian families has unfolded before our eyes. The knowledge of this war before us cannot become unknown. What do we do with the notion of the suffering of others? What does this knowledge do to us? The Israeli British sociologist, Stanley Cohen (2001) explores in his book States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering, how disturbing realities are avoided and evaded, pointing to explanations of the “passive bystander” and “compassion fatigue”. I have resisted both, and resourced fiercely, in staying present as the number of fatalities grew. I observed some of those responses amongst my personal and professional peers, I also saw the colleagues who stood with this knowledge and called for an end to suffering.

As the weeks passed, Palestinian mental health professionals continued their call to colleagues globally, in upholding the ethics of our professional role, free from corruption by political ideology. Dr. Samah Jabr, Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist has long cautioned against pathologising the Palestinian experience, instead pointing to the real cause of psychological suffering (November 2018) Dr. Jabr has argued that there is no Post in PTSD in Palestine, as it is not post, rather continuously present. There is an ongoing, repetitive, historical, collective trauma that is passed on from one generation to the next, which underpins intergenerational trauma. Dr. Jabr describes the collective psychological suffering and collective anxiety as pandemics, as a result of the daily sudden traumatic deaths of young people, and how every family is touched by the experience of detention and torture (July 2023). As the violence escalated, Dr. Jabr has impressed upon the urgent need to build communal forms of care in addressing Palestine’s collective trauma. Dr. Jabr not only advocated the healing practices and grassroots support within Palestinian culture but also the ethos of “Sumud”, which is integral to survival. The Arabic word Sumud, literally means “steadfastness” and is often symbolised by the olive tree. Sumud is central to survival, resistance and resilience, and is part of daily life for Palestinians. Dr. Jabr highlights how practitioners can focus on Sumud, solidarity, redress, resistance, accountability, narratives, storytelling, and community healing, contributing to addressing collective trauma beyond clinical definitions. (Nov 2023).

The ethos of Sumud I witnessed in Palestine embraced me, and I saw its life-affirming energy when all else seemed futile. Back here in Ireland, I have felt the sense of powerlessness in seeing the continuous trauma perpetrated and held tightly Seamus Heaney’s words about Ireland, that “the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme” (2020, p.101). I remembered my years in 1980s Belfast, and being humbled by how families lived peacefully when there seemed to be none. I drew on the Northern Ireland and Palestine experience of family survival, in the work of Gwyn Daniel, Arlene Healey, and Mohammad Marie (2020). They describe the impact on families within those two countries:

These range from material effects such as death, injury, destruction of community infrastructure, violent dislocations, and destruction of the home as a place of safety to the less visible effects of shame, humiliation, silencing, and the erosion of hope. (Daniel et al, 2022, p.211)

They also highlight the psychological impact on those practitioners working in those communities and the energy that is needed to maintain therapeutic input. While those families are within unsafe and traumatic environments, so also are the clinicians endeavouring to provide crisis and therapeutic intervention. The risk of burnout and secondary trauma for those practitioners invariably increases, as does the question of the efficacy of their work. We have seen Northern Ireland change immensely over recent years, with peace being a reality in the family home now. However, the intergenerational effect of trauma is also part of that reality, as is the long road to Post Traumatic Growth. Here is the difference for Palestine, as yet there seems no safe space for families, nor therapeutic work for healing to take place.

Within such an environment Daniel, Healey, and Marie emphasise that both bearing witness and holding hope are an integral part of survival, which as clinicians, we hold with our clients. The various processes of “doing hope” to which Daniel, Healey and Marie point include:

Witnessing accounts of suffering without flinching or disassociating, naming the intentions and processes behind the infliction of wounds on families and communities, and documenting in detail acts of resilience, resistance, and, above all, the maintenance—against all the odds— of the bonds that matter. (2020, p. 213)

I have felt both overwhelmed and emboldened and hold that the therapeutic witnessing is a therapeutic process that can bring about change in itself. Weingarten (2010) reminds us that it is the therapist’s job to “do hope”. In the face of relentless violence, hope can feel inaccessible and unrealistic, and this is where Weingarten asserts that “reasonable hope” can be done. I echo her appeal to the universal collective activity of doing so. This calls for humility in facing our sense of powerlessness, in order that we can stay engaged with facing the truth of trauma. The place of courage and compassion is also needed to nourish resilience, and keep despair at bay through these fragile times, as van der Kolk reminds us “Trauma constantly confronts us with our fragility and with man’s inhumanity to man but also with our extraordinary resilience.” (van der Kolk, 2015: p. 356)

Áine Hutchinson is a Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapist and works in private practice in Cloughjordan Ecovillage. A member of IAHIP, IACP and ICP, Áines additional training in Trauma has been in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and EMDR. With other therapists, Áine is a founding member of the Ireland Palestine Mental Health Network, which welcomes all new members: www.ipmhn.com Contact: aine@hutchinson.work and www.aine.hutchinson.work

References

Jabr, S. (2018, November 29) Professional solidarity with Palestine: A mental health imperative. https:// www.middleeastmonitor.com/20181129-professional-solidarity-with-palestine-a-mental-health- imperative/

Jabr, S. (2023, July 17) Palestine: Therapy as an act of national liberation. https://www.atlasofwars. com/palestine-therapy-as-an-act-of-national-liberation/

Jabr, S. (2023, November 16) Understanding palestine’s colonial, intergenerational trauma from a mental health perspective. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/understanding-palestines- colonial-intergenerational-trauma-from-a-mental-health-perspective/article67537380.ece

Kemp, M. (2011). Dehumanizing guilt and large group dynamics with reference to west Israel and Palestinians. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 27(4), 383-405.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0118.2011.01250.x

Lentin, R. (2010). Co-memory and melancholia: Israelis memorialising the Palestinian nakba.

Manchester University Press.

van der Kolk, B.A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma.

Penguin.

Weingarten, K. (2010). Reasonable hope: Construct, clinical applications, and supports. Family Process, 49(1), 5-25. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.2010.01305.x

IAHIP 2024 - INSIDE OUT 102 - Spring 2024