Madar Al-Carmel Publishes New Article on Unconscious Legacies of Trauma

Madar Al-Carmel's Liberation Psychology program has released a new article titled "Unconscious Legacies: Collective Trauma, Identity, and the Psychoanalytic Roots of Power and Occupation." Authored by clinical psychologist Sirine Afifi, the piece was published in English in July. It examines the lasting impact of collective trauma and unconscious defense mechanisms on identity formation, power dynamics, and cycles of victimhood.

The article explores how historical traumas, including exile, antisemitism, and the Holocaust, have shaped Jewish national consciousness and reinforced narratives of existential threat and survival. Drawing on the concept of "unconscious remembrance," which describes the unconscious transmission and re-activation of historical suffering in the present, the study aims to show how unresolved trauma continues to shape political reality, perpetuate expansionist ideologies, and reproduce intergenerational cycles of oppression.

By integrating psychoanalytic theory with historical research, the article argues that societies can become trapped in a trauma-dominated present, where past traumatic events are re-enacted through memory practices, identification, and defense mechanisms. From this perspective, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be understood as a conflictual temporality characterized by repetition. In Israel, the remembrance of the Holocaust and feelings of existential insecurity are often institutionalized and securitized through state discourse and political culture. During pivotal moments, political elites amplify these sentiments to leverage their emotional impact on the public, thereby sustaining a state of emergency that normalizes military rule.