Anti Semitism A Social Disease

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A groundbreaking work on the psychodynamics of bigotry and anti-Semitism. As a child, Ted Rubin could not understand why some people hated him and his family only because they were Jews. He soon discovered that other groups were hated and that bigotry was a dangerous disease that destroys its hosts as well as its victims. As a psychiatrist, Dr. Rubin learned that anti-Semitism and other deep-seated prejudices are non-organic diseases of the mind: malignant emotional illnesses that can be treated only by first understanding the unique psychodynamics involved. Little has been written about this aspect of bigotry. Anti-Semitism is a bold endeavor to shed light on one of humankind's most destructive and contagious illnesses, and offers hope and healing for the future. In Anti-Semitism, Rubin lays the groundwork for a person to successfully overcome hatred, to understand where it comes from and why, and to recognize that anti-Semitism devastates people, cripples self-esteem, and is capable of “engendering great suffering, horror and murder.” Anyone who has wrestled with hatred or bigotry, either as the victim or the host, will find clarity and direction in Dr. Rubin’s eloquent analysis.

This is a report on a nine-year study of the psychodynamics of antisemitism. Undertaken by Dr. Mortimer Ostow on behalf of the Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund, it puts flesh and bones on the discussion of antisemitism in Sigmund Freud's 1939 classic theoretical study Moses and Monotheism. Its close adherence to case material and its application of psychoanalytic theory to historical data and cultural products yield new insights into bigotry and equity alike. By examining prejudiced patients and their myths, Dr. Ostow shows the common threads of antisemitism in a variety of national and cultural settings, even under supposed optimal conditions when antisemitism is stringently controlled. The work uses the psychiatric approach, and can be read as a study of how this area of behavioral science reveals the interplay of the individual and the group, cultural background and material opportunities.

In Haunted Life, David Marriott examines the complex interplay between racial fears and anxieties and the political-visual cultures of suspicion and state terror. He compels readers to consider how media technologies are "haunted" by the phantom of racial slavery. Through examples from film and television, modernist literature, and philosophy, he shows how the ideological image of a brutal African past is endlessly recycled and how this perpetuation of historical catastrophe stokes our nation's race-conscious paranoia. Drawing on a range of comparative readings by writers, theorists, and filmmakers, including John Edgar Wideman, Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, Issac Julien, Alain Locke, and Sidney Poitier, Haunted Life is a bold and original exploration of the legacies of black visual culture and the political, deeply sexualized violence that lies buried beneath it.

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD • The prescient founder of The Free Press delivers an urgent wake-up call to all Americans exposing the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in this country—and explains what we can do to defeat it. “A praiseworthy and concise brief against modern-day anti-Semitism.”—The New York Times On October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were gunned down as they prayed at their synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. For most Americans, the massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where Bari Weiss became a bat mitzvah, came as a shock. But anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred, commonplace across the Middle East and on the rise for years in Europe. So that terrible morning in Pittsburgh, as well as the continued surge of hate crimes against Jews in cities and towns across the country, raise a question Americans cannot avoid: Could it happen here? This book is Weiss’s answer. Like many, Weiss long believed this country could escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. With its promise of free speech and religion, its insistence that all people are created equal, its tolerance for difference, and its emphasis on shared ideals rather than bloodlines, America has been, even with all its flaws, a new Jerusalem for the Jewish people. But now the luckiest Jews in history are beginning to face a three-headed dragon known all too well to Jews of other times and places: the physical fear of violent assault, the moral fear of ideological vilification, and the political fear of resurgent fascism and populism. No longer the exclusive province of the far right, the far left, and assorted religious bigots, anti-Semitism now finds a home in identity politics as well as the reaction against identity politics, in the renewal of America First isolationism and the rise of one-world socialism, and in the spread of Islamist ideas into unlikely places. A hatred that was, until recently, reliably taboo is migrating toward the mainstream, amplified by social media and a culture of conspiracy that threatens us all. Weiss is one of our most provocative writers, and her cri de coeur makes a powerful case for renewing Jewish and American values in this uncertain moment. Not just for the sake of America’s Jews, but for the sake of America.

Following World War II and the exposure of the concentration camps, psychiatry turned its attention to a vast range of cultural concerns with results that seemed to indicate a decline of stigma over time. However, it is now clear that whatever drives prejudices, especially in the case of anti-Semitism, was just dormant and perhaps not fully understood. Hate crimes and anti-Semitism broad recently re-emerged in Europe, and the United States followed shortly thereafter. The US Federal Bureau of investigation reports that New York City, which is still considered the most Jewish-friendly region in the US, experienced a 22% spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes in 2018 alone, with more extremes in other regions of the country. Neo-Nazi groups have grown stronger in the United States and abroad, often resulting in organized acts of violence. The recent Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, PA demonstrated that these acts are not limited to one-on-one interactions, but sometimes as prolific, large-scale act. The medical community is not immune from biases either. The Cleveland Clinic recently fired a young doctor after she publicly declared her wishes to inject Jewish patients with lethal substances, which is only one of many hateful comments she made on social media over the course of several years. Psychiatrists in particular grapple with this as they try to serve patients of both Jewish and non-Jewish descent who struggle to process these acts of hate. Despite all of this, there is no training and no resource to guide medical professionals through these challenges. The editors of the recent Springer book, Islamophobia and Psychiatry, recognize this gap in the literature and seek to develop another high-quality text to meet this need. Written by expert clinicians in global regions where these incidents are most prevalent, the book seeks to be neither political nor opinion-based; instead, the text takes an innovative cross-cultural psychiatric interaction, similar to what was done with Springer’s new Islamophobia book. Coverage will range from foci on the social psychiatric aspects of anti-Semitism to how it may in turn infuse clinical encounters between patients and clinicians. Written by experts in this area, the insight and expertise of psychiatrists from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds will focus on what psychiatrists need to know to combat the negative mental health impact that increasingly rise out of this particular phenomenon. Such a multi-cultural psychiatric approach has never been taken before for this topic. This discourse is the foundation for the primary goal of this book: to develop the tools needed to improve clinical outcomes for patients. Hence, this book aims to present an updated, comprehensive bio-psychosocial perspective on anti-Semitism at the interface of clinical psychiatry.