This book tries to make a case for
the legitimacy, admissibility, and usefulness of a certain kind of
psychoanalytic psychohistory, by attempting to show its value in understanding
what the author calls "the Arab-Israeli conflict".

The first thing we must notice
about this book is its title, which provides us with a framing for the
historical events it deals with. Reading the book, and not just its cover,
makes clear that the title was not just a whim, or a marketing decision. The
book really aims to analyze the "Arab-Israeli conflict" by regarding
it as a case of fratricide. In the Introduction, Falk further articulates his
kinship analogy, as part of his effort to present an equivalence of the two
sides. "From the psychological viewpoint, the Israeli Jews and the
Palestinian Arabs, think, feel and act like rival brothers who are involved in
a fratricidal struggle" (p. 5). Moreover, the two sides are:"…two
traumatized groups of people on a tiny piece of real estate that keep on
traumatizing one another and themselves" (p.5). All humans are brothers (and
sisters) and share a common fate, but the idea of the equivalence of Israelis
and Palestinians simply  flies in the face of  everything we know about events
in West Asia over the past too centuries.  (I will make no comment regarding "the
Holy Land" in the title).

The book’s vantage point for
looking at history is purely psychological: "As a result of the mutual
lack of recognition and empathy, a violent, murderous conflict has been raging
between Israelis and Arabs for over a century" (p. 116). Falk states more
than once that there is something irrational about the human actions observed
here, something crazy, and that is why we a psychoanalysis intervention is
called for, and then  seeks to persuade us that if we study history, we should
examine its true roots in the early lives of major leaders

 The perspective we are offered is
totally Israeli, with no pretense of impartiality. The author writes more than
once "We Israelis" and indeed offers us some insights into Israeli
culture. His style is journalistic, and in the tradition created by Henry Luce
in Time, an individual’s name is preceded by a string of adjectives: "The
prominent Palestinian American scholar Edward William Said" is also "this
Christian Arab intellectual" (p. 120). Henry Kissinger is "the
German-born American Jewish political scientist and secretary of state"
(p. 146) and Samuel P. Huntington becomes "the American Christian
political scientist" (p. 147). Huntington may not be Jewish, which makes
him a gentile, but he would be surprised to be classified as "Christian".

Falk’s psychohistory offers, and
this is amply demonstrated in this book, not just psychobiography, because
every biography uses psychological explanations, but psychopathobiograhy,
including psychiatric labels taken from the latest edition of the DSM, the
official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric
Association. You don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to realize that we all find safety
in classification, nosology, and diagnosis. But these are wide of the mark when
we try to describe individuals whose high level of performance does not seem to
be impaired by any diagnosis (justified or not). How do we interpret an
individual personality, not a statistical abstraction but a real human being?
The answer must be that we do it with a great deal of caution. We have at our
disposal quite a few well-validated instruments for personality assessment in
the form of questionnaires filled out by the person involved, or by observers.
Some of these have been used on hundreds of thousands of individuals. Even
after carrying out a complete personality assessment, something which may
require a few days of work for the subject and for the experts (and the
computers) involved, our predictions and interpretations will be cautious,
tentative, and qualified.  The author’s practice of diagnosing individuals
without even interviewing them seems to run counter to the standards embodied
in the DSM, which expects us to base our judgments on direct observations of
individual behavior.

The psychobiographical research at
the center of the book covers two individuals: Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat,
but passing comments are made about scores of others. Thus, we learn that "In
the unconscious mind of U.S. President George W. Bush, America is the idealized all-good mother, while her enemies–the Axis of Evil–are  the all-bad
mothers…" (p. 126). This is presented not as speculation but as a factual
finding. It is unclear how Falk could know what is going on in any unconscious
mind, especially without asking the person to fill out a questionnaire, or
interviewing him. Even if we assume that for Bush, America is an all-good
mother, how does that explain any historical developments?  By the same token,
we can assume that for Kim Jong Il, North Korea is the good mother, while the U.S. is a bad mother. How does this help us understand or predict anything?

Thirty six pages are devoted to the
personality of Ariel Sharon, a case of "destructive charismatic leadership",
and he gets a formal diagnosis of   "borderline personality" (p. 48).
The analysis includes such interpretations as "Unconsciously, however,
Arik wanted to undo his feelings of failure, shame, and humiliation" (p.
45). It is possible that all of us may want to undo feelings of failure, shame,
and humiliation, consciously or unconsciously, but it is unclear how this
judgment was reached in this case. "The brash young officer found a new
father in the older leader, who, in turn, found a new son in the dashing young
warrior"(p. 46). Sharon’s new father in this case was David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime-minister. We get little evidence to support this speculation.
Ben-Gurion was known for identifying promising young functionaries and
promoting them to positions of importance despite their very young age. He surrounded
himself with younger lieutenants and assistants, some of whom went on to become
important national leaders. Sharon was clearly not invited to join this inner
circle of favorites.

Yasser Arafat gets only 13 pages to
cover his own "destructive charismatic leadership". Falk uses a study
by two Israeli psychologists who analyzed  Israeli newspaper stories about
Arafat to conclude that he had (surprise! surprise!) "many unhealthy
personality traits–considerable emotional instability, a compulsive need for
independence at all costs, a need to show his superiority at all times, a
limited ability to establish intimate relations…." (p. 80). Is the
reader expected to take such judgments, produced by such research, seriously? Arafat,
like Sharon, with real even-handedness, gets a diagnosis of "narcissistic
and borderline personality disorders … As with Sharon, unconscious
sadomasochism is a cornerstone of Arafat’s narcissism "(p. 86). Can the
author offer us any observations to support this astounding claim of "unconscious
sadomasochism"? We simply don’t know. The various diagnoses heaped on
these two leaders seem totally irrelevant to the leaders’ actions and
accomplishments in the real world.

We are also being told that "Arafat’s
violent unconscious feelings of helplessness, rejection, abandonment, sorrow,
rage, and vengeance continue to simmer inside him. From the age of four he had
two paramount emotional quests: finding a better mother and father to make up
for those who had rejected and abandoned him, and seeking revenge on
unconscious representations of the Bad Mother and Bad Father. Jerusalem and Palestine became  the idealized Good Mother… and Israel–as well as the Arab states…..took
the role of  the hated bad parents" (p. 80). I am ready to believe that we
are all seeking, consciously and unconsciously, better mothers, fathers,
brothers, sisters, etc. to compensate for early frustrations, but this is so
common and obvious that noting it does not add anything to our appreciation of
either leaders or followers in history. What creates leaders is that in
addition to seeking substitute family members, struggling with early
deprivations, and showing some psychopathology, just like the rest of humanity,
they have some other qualities which make them capable of actually leading
large groups of fellow humans in war and peace. In addition to personal
problems they must have some outstanding capabilities. If we are serious about
the psychology of leaders, it is clear that some of the qualities involved are
intelligence, social skills, organizational skills, good communication skills,
and empathy.  All this is totally absent from the discussion in this book.

Speculative interpretations may
serve as the starting point for the development of a systematic search for
evidence, but this is not  Falk’s method. The main problem in this book is that
here speculation, only tangentially related to any systematic search for
evidence, simply leads to more speculations. In several places, the author
quite explicitly addresses academic historians, and it seems as if he expected
this case study to decisively demonstrate the greater efficacy of his approach
over all others, thus winning his readers over to the cause of this kind of
psychoanalytic psychohistory.  I am afraid that, after reading it, academic historians
will be left sorely frustrated in their search for new insights about
historical processes.

©
2006 Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi has written extensively
about the Israel/Palestine situation. See Beit-Hallahmi, B.   Original
Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel.  New York:
Interlink, 1993; Bunzl, J. &
Beit-Hallahmi, B. Psychoanalysis, Identity, and Ideology: Critical
Essays on the Israel/Palestine Case:.  Boston: Kluwer, 2002.

Categories: Psychoanalysis