Rita Giacaman of Birzeit University adapted conventional
individualised models of physical and mental health by linking the biomedical sphere to the socio-political context. T is involves highlighting ‘subjugated knowledges’ of violation aff ecting everyone in the community, including her own research team. Giacaman and her colleagues have pioneered research measures that include “humiliation, deprivation, insecurity and distress among other manifestations of the ill health accompanying the invisible wounds of war” (2018, p.16).
Therapeutic responses Palestinian practitioners face the dilemma of trying to provide
therapeutic interventions while simultaneously knowing that mental wellbeing in such repressive conditions is unat ainable. Space doesn’t allow me to describe their work but, since solidarity is the most important bulwark against depression and despair, much therapy takes place in groups rather than with individuals. T ese include narrative approaches, art, music, theatre and play for children. Being, as I am, an ‘outsider witness’ to the unbearable suff ering
infl icted upon Palestinian citizens and the struggles faced by mental health practitioners, can easily evoke feelings of impotence and inadequacy. T ese feelings can lead to disassociation, becoming a ‘failed witness’. Jessica Benjamin used this term to describe failures of listening, but it also includes listening but failing to act. Activism is thus a crucial part of witnessing. Situations of gross inequity and injustice sometimes lead outsiders to employ narratives of victimhood that the ‘victims’ themselves refuse. It can also be tempting to take up the opposite polarity of ‘resilience’, romanticising the suff ering population and fi nding only examples of strength and survival. While these narratives are certainly not hard to fi nd, they risk over-simplifying a range of complex responses to the oppressive practices described. Just as understanding how oppression works requires exploring
the detail of daily lives, so resilience needs to be understood through accumulated small actions. Resilience is a slippery concept, too easily arrogated to the qualities of individuals or groups or de- politicised by minimising the long-term psychological impacts of oppression and abuse. Giacaman suggests, instead, the idea of endurance as a condition for resistance. Endurance evolves out of extreme hardship, but without implying passive acceptance of suff ering. It is a necessary condition for the resistance that always springs up in response to oppression. An endurance/resistance nexus implies a more dynamic relationship between experience and action, between the suff ering that leads to individual withdrawal into despair and the suff ering that leads to solidarity and the collective action that inspires hope. In writing this paper, examples closer to home have kept coming
to mind – how easily ‘others’ are constructed as a source of fear rather than as themselves frightened, how housing policies undermine mental wellbeing, create insecurity and disconnection from networks, how much insecurity and uncertainty is borne by those with least resources, how shame and humiliation are built into the welfare system and how much impotent fury is stoked by unaccountability. My Palestinian colleagues, whether they describe themselves as
systemic or not, are adept at linking up the levels because, although they may not suff er the same poverty and deprivation as their clients, they experience the same system of oppression. T ey have pioneered ways of thinking we can all learn from; foregrounding social suff ering, contesting globalising professional knowledge, and combining therapeutic roles with political activism.
50
“I talk – not only in order to be a coherent person, both
inside and outside my professional role – but because I cannot do otherwise…I cannot deny my feelings about the political reality; I cannot turn my face the other way” (Samah Jabr, 2018).
References Benjamin, J. (2018) Beyond Doer and Done to. London: Routledge. Fanon, F. (1963) The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse of Language. NewYork: Pantheon. Giacaman, R. (2018) Reframing public health in wartime: From the bio- medical model to the wounds inside. Journal of Palestine Studies, 47: 9-27. Jabr, S. & Berger, E. (2017) The trauma of humiliation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The Arab Journal of Psychiatry, 28(2): 154-159. Jabr, S. (August 2018) Middle East Monitor. Punamaki, R., Qouta, S. & El Sarraj, E. (2001) Resiliency factors predicting psychological adjustment after political violence among Palestinian children. International Journal of Behavioural Development, 25 (3): 256-267. Said, E. (1978) Orientalism. London: Vintage. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, N. (2015) Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear, Cambridge Studies in Law and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Further reading Daniel, G. (2012) With an exile’s eye: Developing positions of cultural refl exivity (with a bit of help from feminism). In: I-B. Krause (ed.) Culture and Refl exivity in Systemic Psychotherapy; Mutual Perspectives. London: Karnac. Daniel, G., Healey, A. & Marie, M. (In press) Families in chronically unsafe community environments: Experiences in Northern Ireland and Palestine. In: K.S. Wampler, M. Rastogi & R. Singh (eds.) The Handbook of Systemic Family Therapy: Volume 4. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Gwyn Daniel is a systemic psychotherapist, supervisor and writer. She lived for a year in Jerusalem, visits Palestine regularly and skypes with professional colleagues in Gaza and the West Bank. She is on the steering group of the UK-Palestine Mental Health Network, which recently organised, with Birkbeck University, a major conference on Palestinian Childhoods. Gwyn would be happy to enter into correspondence about issues raised in her article. Her email address is
Danielgwyn@gmail.com
Context 164, August 2019
“The strong do what they can and the weak suff er what they must”: Palestinian families under occupation
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