Offer practical help, not open letters, says expert

A leading Jewish psychologist, David Cohen, says that members of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) would be better to offer counselling services to Gazan residents, rather than writing open letters calling for a ceasefire, as a number did this week.

Under the umbrella heading of “Clinicians For Gaza”, nearly 200 current and former members of the BPC have signed an open letter calling for “psychoanalytic professionals to address the human catastrophe in Gaza”, and saying that they are “uncomfortable with the loud silence of our professional associations in response to these atrocities”, which they say are of “an apparently genocidal nature”.

The psychoanalysts acknowledge that there was “an appropriate response” to “the horrific attacks launched by Hamas on October 7”.

But, they complain, “the historical context of occupation and siege, impoverishment and massacre was ignored. This scotomisation [a psychological term meaning only seeing what one wants to see] underlies international complicity with Israel’s response”.

The signatories call for “an immediate ceasefire and negotiations towards a peace aimed at providing justice and security for both the Palestinian and Israeli communities”.

But Cohen, publisher of Psychology News Press and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, told Jewish News that the BPC signatories ought to be volunteering to travel to the Gaza borders either with Israel or Egypt in order to offer counselling. He said: “That is a much more practical thing that they should be doing.”