Practicing Psychoanalysis in Israel: Seeing Through Blindness

Gabriela Mann's book explores the work of an Israeli psychoanalyst who encounters the trauma and tragedy of Israelis living in an environment saturated with existential anxieties and threats to their well-being.       

This work offers clinical materials that illustrate the possibility of expansion of the mind through a spiritual dimension in psychoanalysis. The main theme focuses on transcending from a narrow perspective to a broad compassionate view by uncovering the interconnectedness between seemingly different phenomena. This cultivates the patients' ability to free themselves from past and contemporary trauma. Drawing on Kohut, Bion, and Winnicott, as well as from Buddhist thinking, Seeing Through Blindness describes the transformation of archaic narcissism, usually concerned with individual goals, to mature narcissism which strives for a supra-individual perspective. The reader is invited to choose among the chapters that describe splits in the self, paradoxes of belonging, perpetrators and victims, perversion, and selfobject needs at times of threat and bereavement.    

The book offers new ways of thinking about trauma in a troubled world, for all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.     

'This remarkable book  brings together psychoanalytic theory to help the reader face the  fraught and traumatic events of the current moment. Utilizing ideas from Kohut, Bion and Winnicott as well as Buddhist practice , Mann lays the ground work for movement from the helplessness of the post-traumatic mind-set, to the state  of self-cohesion, to an even broader spiritual perspective. Her clinical examples illustrate the challenges and possibilities when the frame of psychotherapeutic work is threatened by overwhelming events in the world at large. This  book is a source of hope and meaning in these very troubled times.'

Anna Orenstein, MD and Rafael Orenstein, MD, Faculty, Boston, Psychoanalytic Society and Institute

'Gabriela Mann gives us a book for the present moment of terrible conflict and suffering, and also for present and future clinical work.  She advocates a practice that draws from both psychoanalytic giants Kohut, Winnicott, and Bion, while integrating and living the faith traditions of Zen, Tao, and Buddhism.  This post-Holocaust book on contemporary psychoanalysis will provide its readers with depth of meaning embedded in clinical stories.'

Donna Orange, Ph.D., Psy.D,  psychoanalyst and philosopher, California. NYU Postdoctoral Program and the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, New York

?Gabi Mann is an esteemed Israeli psychoanalyst endowed with a sensitive heart and spirit. Her extraordinary book brings with it a novel uniqueness in that it is not only an original personal work on psychoanalysis but tells the story of the evolution of a unique psychoanalysis that is conceived and researched in Israel. Gabi is able to extract the ?area of faith,? to use Michael Eigen?s (1981) inspirational term, from psychoanalytic history and brings together reflections, ideas, and concepts collated from various paradigmatic schools.

Gabi is a courageous model of the ethical stability of a psychoanalyst who realizes the unique potential of the psychoanalytic position for selfobjects, validating the particular subjectivity of the individual, and at the same time initiating a transformative universal spirit.?

Raanan Kulka, M.A., Clinical Psychologist and Training analyst, Israel Psychoanalytic Society (IPA), Founding member  and Head, Human Spirit, Psychoanalytic-Buddhist Training Program Lod, Past- chair and Founding Member, Israel Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity.

?Gabi Mann?s book  is a veritable treasure. Positioned critically in Israel, it is a uniquely rich compendium of clinical thinking that offers a prism into complex trauma, multigenerational, and in the immediate present given the horrors of October 7th and its sequelae.   

Inspired by Kohut, Bion and key Buddhist principles, Gabi offers us a thesis of transforming trauma into tragedy.  She does so through compelling clinical material that draws from her professional experience.

This book will have special relevance for all clinicians trying to navigate our perilous socio-political milieus and their penetration into our clinical spaces. In highlighting the generative power of the human spirit, Gabi?s book enables the reader to hold a measure of hope that we can rise from and transform the ashes into life anew.  It is a must read!?

Hazel Ipp, PhD, Psychologist Psychoanalyst, Editor in Chief Emeritus, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Editorial Boards: Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Self and Context, Founding Member, Vice President, Faculty and Supervisor: Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Founding Director, Past-President and Board member: IARPP Faculty and Supervisor; ISIPS?e, Rome.