A response to Martin Weimer’s ‘The Talmudic way of thinking cannot suddenly have disappeared from us: Death instinct, anti-Semitism and Jewish traditions in the foundation matrix of group analysis’

Abstract

The author of this article poses three inter-related themes. 1) The primacy of the death instinct that accounts for destructivity in groups and, especially, for anti-Semitism. 2) There is a blind spot in group analysis that conceals the importance of anti-Semitism in its inception and history, which he deems to be largely derived from Foulkes’s idealization of groups and denial of their destructive potential. Hence, anti-Semitism is part of the foundation matrix of group analysis. 3) Group analytical practice, right down to its clinical details, can be understood as a performative realization of the rabbinic Jewish tradition. The present reviewer disagrees with these three points and expounds the reasons for this. However, he welcomes the opportunity it provides to engage in a most needed critical discussion.