Transference and Countertransference Issues During Times of Violent Political Conflict: The Arab Therapist–Jewish Patient Dyad

Abstract

The complexity of long-term, dynamically oriented psychotherapy with a patient who belongs to an “enemy” national group, requires more than cultural sensitivity, especially during ongoing violent political conflict. This paper deals with some of the transference–countertransference dynamics that face therapists from a minority group involved in a political conflict with the patient’s majority group. Clinical examples from the Palestinian therapist–Jewish patient therapeutic dyad are presented in order to clarify these issues as they relate to setting, contract, interpretation, and termination of therapy. The main argument is that the therapist in such cases has to process not only his sense of threat, anger, and guilt in order to develop a good containment function during therapy, but also has to work on integrating different and denied parts of his national identity in order to be able to hear other, more internal dynamics in the patient’s mind, which are conveyed via the political conflict reality and transference issues.