People - laymen and practitioners alike - face serious difficulties in making sense of each other's feelings, behaviour, and discourse in everyday life and after traumatic experiences. Acknowledging and working through these difficulties is the subject of this book. After a critical look at the psychological and philosophical literature, the author identifies two groups of impediments. First, the indescribable, as it appears when individuals try to understand and integrate their first heart attack into their previous life-experience, when a group of pathfinders talk about their different maps of the mind and nature, or when a team of welfare practitioners tries to develop a common approach to their regional population. Second, the undiscussable, as it appears in the transmission, from generation to generation, of the traumatic experiences of the families of both Holocaust survivors and Nazi perpetrators, the book showing how their descendants can work through the burden of the past by confronting themselves and each other through a prolonged group encounter. This text provides a way of looking at life experiences, individual as well as inter-personal. It proposes a psychological theoretical framework in a way to which both laymen and professionals can relate while confronting similar issues in their everyday experiences and discourse. It relates to the problems of psychological adaptation arising from the transition from totalitarian to democratic regimes, which is especially relevant to present-day Central and Eastern European societies.

Dan Bar-On's psychosocial approach sees identity as dynamic, constructed in contra-distinction to various "Others." Drawing parallels to other societies, he looks most closely at identity formation among Israelis, or more precisely, among the largely secular Jews from European lands who formed the hegemonic backbone of Israeli society. The Others in question, Diaspora Jews, Jews from Muslim countries, and Arabs, represent repressed aspects of the collective self. Case studies and analysis depict various stages in identity formation, as do "personal windows" onto the author as he experienced these stages. Monolithic identity construction characterized Israel's early years but this began to disintegrate with the passing of time, in ways that were often painful and confusing, though necessary in the view of Bar-On and others. A neo-monolithic backlash has been the response to the disintegration stage in recent years. Yet the book holds out the possibility of a constructive dialogue, internal and among groups in society, that will give rise to a better-integrated and more inclusive identity construction.

The title describes Dan Bar-On's method of using storytelling as both a qualitative biographical research method and as an intervention, to bring people from opposite sides to a dialogue. Such work needs slow pace and long-term commitment, with a special combination of a scientific rigorous analysis with a sensitive approach toward the people one approaches. The book first surveys the author's earlier work in this field, in the Kibbutz, with families of Holocaust survivors and descendents of Nazi perpetrators, bringing the two groups together. However, most of the book is devoted to Bar-On's work with Palestinians, both Israeli-Palestinians and Palestinians from the PNA. Through different settings (working with PRIME on developing a school textbook with two narratives; with refugees; at a University setting with a mixed students group; conducting interviews in Haifa) he describes the hardships of peace building 'under fire', but also the potential achievements of such work.

Terrorism and war have engendered a special set of people with distinctive and uniquely contemporary therapeutic needs. How do we cope with the personal experience of political violence? Living with Terror, Working with Trauma addresses the ways that mental health practitioners can assist survivors of terrorism. Drawing upon the experience of leading practitioners and renowned experts throughout the world, this edited volume explores the most innovative methods currently employed to help people heal and even grow from traumatic experiences. It argues for a multi-dimensional approach to understanding and treating the effects of terror-related trauma. Comprehensive in scope, Living with Terror, Working with Trauma covers psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, existential, and neuro-physiological techniques for working with individuals and groups, children and adults, both in the clinic and in the field. The contributors share their personal and clinical experiences in Hiroshima, Cambodia, the Middle East, Vietnam, and other sites of mass violence and terror, including the Holocaust. A special section is devoted to the September 11th. As it addresses the basic existential challenge of finding meaning and creatively transforming one's experience of terror and trauma, this volume explores the territory, identifies the key problems, and presents effective therapeutic solutions."

People - laymen and practitioners alike - face serious difficulties in making sense of each other's feelings, behaviour, and discourse in everyday life and after traumatic experiences. Acknowledging and working through these difficulties is the subject of this book. After a critical look at the psychological and philosophical literature, the author identifies two groups of impediments. First, the indescribable, as it appears when individuals try to understand and integrate their first heart attack into their previous life-experience, when a group of pathfinders talk about their different maps of the mind and nature, or when a team of welfare practitioners tries to develop a common approach to their regional population. Second, the undiscussable, as it appears in the transmission, from generation to generation, of the traumatic experiences of the families of both Holocaust survivors and Nazi perpetrators, the book showing how their descendants can work through the burden of the past by confronting themselves and each other through a prolonged group encounter. This text provides a way of looking at life experiences, individual as well as inter-personal. It proposes a psychological theoretical framework in a way to which both laymen and professionals can relate while confronting similar issues in their everyday experiences and discourse. It relates to the problems of psychological adaptation arising from the transition from totalitarian to democratic regimes, which is especially relevant to present-day Central and Eastern European societies.

Dan Bar-On's psychosocial approach sees identity as dynamic, constructed in contra-distinction to various "Others." Drawing parallels to other societies, he looks most closely at identity formation among Israelis, or more precisely, among the largely secular Jews from European lands who formed the hegemonic backbone of Israeli society. The Others in question, Diaspora Jews, Jews from Muslim countries, and Arabs, represent repressed aspects of the collective self. Case studies and analysis depict various stages in identity formation, as do "personal windows" onto the author as he experienced these stages. Monolithic identity construction characterized Israel's early years but this began to disintegrate with the passing of time, in ways that were often painful and confusing, though necessary in the view of Bar-On and others. A neo-monolithic backlash has been the response to the disintegration stage in recent years. Yet the book holds out the possibility of a constructive dialogue, internal and among groups in society, that will give rise to a better-integrated and more inclusive identity construction.