Myths and Taboos among Israeli First- and Second-Generation Psychiatrists in Regard to the Holocaust Haim Dasberg, M.D. The Confrontation with Poland Now I come to the problem of my own personal anti-Polish taboos. As painful as this is, it can no longer be postponed by any more intellectual exercises. We must face this as follows: Back in 1940-1945 in Holland, the black hole into which we were all to disappear was Poland, even beyond the far-off borders of Germany, but threatening us much closer to home. My father was exterminated here in Poland in 1943. I had always thought it was in Auschwitz, but it turned out actually to have been Sobibor. A colleague in Jerusalem lent me a book on Sobibor; it was a terribly traumatic experience to read it. I had even developed a phobic avoidance of the house in which this colleague had been living. Some ten years ago I was in a plane flying over Poland, 30,000 feet up in the air. Poland was covered by heavy clouds. I imagined them to be clouds of ashes. As we came back out into the sun over the Black Sea, I got up and went to the back of the plane to wash my hands, as my Orthodox father would have done after leaving a graveyard. A Jewish custom of purification. Several years ago I was urged by the then-chairman of the Israel Psycho- pharmacological Society to participate in a psychopharmacological meeting in Krakow and present the opening address. I intended to speak about the clinical research findings that are derived from the prevailing dehumanizing practice of listing behavior items on questionnaires and rating scales, from selected, nonselected, and randomized comparative samples of anonymous human beings, a total fragmentation for the sake of valid statistics. However, I did not go to Krakow at that time, because it was the place, the soil, and the insurmountable mourning that created those walls and phobias. Then, last year, I did go to Krakow, the old royal city of Poland, with its empty Jewish town of Kazimirz. During a visit to the Royal Tombs I was told by my colleagues from the Jaegellonian University that mythical Poland was ruled by a mythical Jewish queen, Maria. This, indeed, is a beautiful myth concealing a terrible taboo. This nostalgic yet controversial remark points to the need for continually clarifying personal encounters in the real world. Only this may hopefully reduce the power of myth and taboo to reasonable proportions. Discussion National myths and Holocaust taboos permeate the therapeutic and clinical attitudes of clinicians also in Israel, especially of those with a Holocaust first- or second-generation background. Developments of their changing attitudes over the past half-century have been traced in the present paper and are schematically outlined in Table 1. The personal narrative and the dialogue with what once was taboo have become a part of clinical reporting and of recent research on trauma and on reminiscing in general. The validity of research in the interhuman realm is enhanced by interwoven accounts of the author's personal reactions (see, for instance, Bar-On in his Legacy of Silence, 1989; Rosenthal in her three-generational research, 1997; Yeheskel's rebiographical method, 1999; Tauber on therapists with Holocaust background, 1998; Dasberg on his work at AMCHA, 1998). The special, summer 1985 issue of the prestigious Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry was dedicated to the present status of the now-adult and aging child survivors of the Holocaust, and contains reports by authors (R. Krell et al.) who enlarge on their personal fates, thus adding to the credibility and validity of their clinical reports. It seems that clinical Holocaust research can no longer be confronted without first clarifying the author's own role in it. The present paper is aimed at demonstrating the power of the personal vis-à-vis the uncritical acceptance of the myths of (scientific) objectivity. Table 1: Phases of Post-Holocaust Psychiatry in Israel Decade Phase Main defense 1940s Shock and shame Perplexity 1950s Therapeutic neutrality Denial 1960s Focus on grave psychopathologies Isolation 1970s Statistics on anonymous nonpatient survivors Fragmentation 1980s New generations, new narratives Projective identification 1990s New (pan-European) dialogues with the "other" Reality-testing Summary With the Exodus, "Massada," and the Warsaw insurrection as background myths, the early Israeli society, defending itself with its back against the wall, had no place for nonheroes. It turned its back on the remnants of the all-too-painful and demoralizing Holocaust as well. The faith in the new sabra-superman was unshakable, whereas Diaspora meant shame. Over the next fifty years of military trauma, terror, and cultural shake-up, taboos broke and myths were remodeled. The central thesis of this paper is that doctors, including psychiatrists, share the myths and taboos of their societies. Their attitudes changed from rejection, denial, therapeutic neutrality, and fragmentation (with focus on the graver forms of psychopathology and epidemiological statistics) toward rehumanization and reindividuation of former victims and toward a new narrative. New generations of therapists, of second- and third-generation survivors, and of new Europeans on the old continent of blood and tears demand a new dialogue. For psychiatrists this means a redefinition of personal and professional identity and new therapeutic models. [Page 4 of 4] Bibliography Bar-On, D., Ostrowsky, T., and Fromer, D. "Who am I in relation to my past, in relation to the Other? 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