Prof. Merav Roth – Clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst and culture researcher from the Department of Counseling and Human Development at Haifa University. She is one of the leading figures in the treatment of victims of the October 7 attacks. Author of several books and articles: Reading the Reader (published by Carmel), True Love as the Love of Truth (published by Alma) and Wars of Impulses (published by Modan).
Prof. Merav Roth, this week you attended the funeral of Carmel Gat, the hostage who was murdered last week in Gaza with the other five hostages. What drove you to this?
"The thing that really broke my heart was the fact that Carmel's father and brother were unable to deliver their eulogy address based on their family relationship alone. Her father, who had others read out his eulogy, dedicated his address to stating the message 'it shouldn't have happened,' and her brother too related to this. They mourned the unnecessary loss of Carmel, who was due to have come home during the first hostage release round, and then once again in the last deal that did not come to fruition.
"All those who spoke at the funeral spoke of Carmel as an individual whose heart overflowed with kindness and was constantly giving to others. This was also backed up by the testimony of those hostages who did succeed in returning from captivity, as they described how she helped them with meditation and yoga, and she recommended that they should write a diary to keep their spirits up. Bearing this in mind, it was most apparent that the family's overall feeling was a combination of total helplessness and extreme anger at the fact that after all, it was the state that failed to bring her home. The right to simply be sad was completely absent."
The terrible feelings from the funeral mix in with the difficult and complex feelings that are affecting us all. It seems that over the course of the last week we have been engulfed by a bubble of depression and desperation. What has been going on with us over the last few days?
"The murder of the six hostages took people back to October 7, as an incident that simply should not have occurred, and gave rise to an emotional desire for somebody to turn back the clock and erase this horrendous error. The desperation also results from what is termed in psychology as 'learned helplessness.' We have been struggling and fighting now for ten and a half months, and as time goes by and the objective has still to be attained – we begin to lose faith in our ability to have an impact on the situation. People are used to the fact that there is a correlation between the extent of the efforts they invest and the outcomes of their actions, and over this last year our actions have not succeeded in bringing about the desired results.
"Moreover, there is a discrepancy between what we expected or were promised and what actually happened. Prior to October 7, we had faith in the establishment and its various systems that are supposed to protect us – and they failed us. They told us 'we are one step away from victory', 'the pressure being applied by the IDF will return the hostages' – and now we see that the IDF pressure has actually killed them. This creates extremely shaky ground under our feet combined with considerable self-doubt, doubts concerning the world as we knew it. It creates profound distress."
In your last book, Wars of Impulses, you write that we are all engaged in internal battles. To what extent is the external distress a result of the internal tensions with which we are all contending at this current juncture?
"There is a constant relationship between the internal struggles that we experience and the tension and distress that we feel outwardly. We are engaged in an internal struggle between the feeling of helplessness and the need to feel that we have the power and the influence over our situation, for example. A deeply wounded state, without the north or the south, without the return of the hostages, a war without an end in sight, combined with an extremely aggressive and divisive public discourse – all of these serve to reinforce the feeling of helplessness. Having said that, I must point out that I am extremely impressed by the fact that the additional part of the soul always manages to come back and lift its head above water, it leads the struggle for a world set right."
In your book, you also relate to the solidarity that is found in the conflict with the desire to jump ship, to get on a plane and leave for somewhere safer.
"The external reality, in which the Israeli sense of partnership and common fate is under attack and the profound belief that 'we don't leave any injured on the battlefield' is being undermined, it is attacking our ability to come together and unite, as Israelis have always done in past wars and emergencies, and thus to gain the cohesive and comforting power of the community.
"I have been working with Kibbutz Be'eri since the war began. Be'eri is a refreshingly inspiring community in terms of its strengths, its wisdom and mutual responsibility. I have learned from them just to what extent being part of a genuine community can serve as a force for healing. This is also being manifested on the national level: when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets following the brutal murder of the six hostages – this is a sign of extraordinary solidarity. When Israeli artists come to sing to wounded soldiers and the families of the fallen – we can then see that not all hope is lost. That the true values of what it means to be an Israeli have not dissipated."
Being detached comes with a price
An additional struggle that many are certainly experiencing at this moment in time is between the desire to survive and live and the feelings of guilt of the survivors.
"It is only natural for people to aspire to live. The urge to live wills us on to engage in creative activity and development. On the other hand, the feelings of guilt sensed by the survivors, and by all of us, cause us to be ashamed of our urge to live and push us to retreat and to limit our actions. And there is something else: we all identify with the hostages due to the staggering existential arbitrariness of it all. As it could have happened to each and every one of us. Empathizing to a moderate extent is both admirable and important as it constitutes part of our mutual responsibility. However, an exaggerated sense of guilt will probably lead to an individual withdrawing from life and could lead to depression and extreme anguish."
The boundary between them is wafer thin. What can we do?
"I propose moving on from a feeling of guilt among the survivors to a sense of obligation, which I define as a duty to create a bridge of light from the victims of October 7 – whether they were murdered, abducted or survived – to our present and future. To project the good and the worthy in them and to perpetuate them in a variety of forms, and above all – by remembering the people that they were before that cursed Shabbat. If we live according to Carmel's spirit, for example, we will continue to advocate doing good. That is genuine loyalty to those figures as October 7, of all days, is the least representative of who they were. Therefore, it would not be fair to them to remember them only via the disaster."
This is also connected to the struggle between remembering and forgetting. It is not always easy to remember and to relate to the trauma, even if we do so indirectly and in a more controlled manner.
"It is impossible to be totally engulfed in an effort to remember and remain connected 24/7 to such a severe trauma, as this would simply break us apart. It is for this reason that we all experience both emotional and mental detachment – disassociation. Even those hurt directly by the October 7 massacre, those freed from captivity, the families of the hostages – all need to conduct themselves with varying degrees of detachment, as otherwise they would not be able to survive mentally. If we do so to a moderate extent, then this actually serves as a positive mechanism that can protect and look after us. But, in view of the long, drawn-out duration of the situation, there is a price to pay for the protracted detachment that is already taking its toll on the emotional functioning of us all. It is for this reason that there is so much fatigue and heaviness accompanying many of us, as our soul wastes a lot of energy on distancing an individual from his soul, so that he won't collapse under the heavy burden of the overwhelming grief, horror, anger and anxiety."
In the meantime, it appears that at least on the street, everybody is coming together.
"At the demonstrations held following the murder of the six hostages we saw a tremendous amount of empathy and affinity. We are intimately familiar with them, them and their families, and this makes the loss into 'ours too.' In addition, the feeling that this could have been avoided – as they appeared on the list of those that were due to be released – created the tidal wave of outrage and frustration.
"People came and flooded the streets en masse to say to themselves that there is still a world for us to struggle for, that our values remain, that concepts such as 'responsibility' and 'tikun' (repairing and improving the world) are still relevant. They took to the streets as we all feel extremely lonely in our anguish, and the comfort provided by belonging to a large body of other humans is extremely considerable. Another reason for taking to the streets is to take part in the effort to control events rather than having events control us. Passivity and standing on the sidelines are experienced as accepting our fate, and in deeper sense – as being complicit in the sacrificing of human lives."
A key question is what is going on in the tunnels right now, what can bolster the hostages being held captive for such a long time now?
"Above all, there is an extremely powerful contract between the hostages themselves and their families of 'we are trying to look after ourselves for you and you for us, and none of us must give in.' Both sides – the hostages held in captivity and the families here in Israel – are trying to preserve themselves for their loved ones.
"An additional source of strength is that sometimes, when your home has been destroyed, the just world becomes your home. We pray that the hostages do not lose their connection with the just and decent world. It is quite possible that they have not lost it, as their view of the just world that was stolen from them continues to hold them as an internal mirror for their true image, and as a hope for a world to which they might be able to return and for which it is worthwhile making the effort to hold out. I personally believe that this does keep some of them going, despite the awful suffering they are experiencing. We sometimes see this in work with children who have been subjected to abuse at home, which is a combined psychological and physical tragedy. On occasions, it is amazing to see just how, armed with awe-inspiring mental resilience, they succeed in safeguarding the just and decent world that has been so absent from their lives as a moral compass to guide them in their inner self, and this preserves and protects them from falling apart, and later on even enables them to reconnect to the just world.
"Values are also a strong mainstay in our mental existence. The hostages there and their families here, and all of us together with them, adhere to values of human dignity and freedom as an internal moral compass, which both objects to what is going on and also keeps alive any hope of repairing the damage. The hostages know precisely what the world is that they believe in, and this helps them to function as humans whose spirit knows to refuse what is going on around them. I can say this with the utmost confidence, as I work with some of the released hostages and have heard what kept them going. I think that this is also what is keeping us going at the moment, the values towards which we aspire. The image of the just and decent world that we await and for which we are tirelessly working, based on the hope and belief that it will eventually arrive.
"This is true for the entire political spectrum – apart from the extremists, who are led by the more primitive areas in the soul. But the majority of the people are neither extremist nor destructive. Most of the people are peace seeking, and they are searching for the path to walk along between their beliefs and the extremely divisive and polarized reality in which we now find ourselves. Unfortunately, neither side is aware of this as regards the other side. This is one of the tragic setbacks that we really need to fix."
The human cure for pain
From a broader perspective, what happens to a society whose resources are being chronically exhausted? The chronic stress with which we have been trying to cope for the last year, what does it really do to us?
"We are in the midst of a nightmare, and we have no influence over what is happening in it, which is constantly going from bad to worse, and the worst part is that we are unable to wake up from it. Usually, people do not dream about their own death, they tend to wake up a moment beforehand. Six innocent people facing a firing squad is a nightmare from which you should usually wake up before the shots are heard. In the nightmare that is our current reality we are witness to the shooting and continue to live after it and to be scared to death of the next shooting.
"Values are also a strong mainstay in our mental existence. The hostages there and their families here, and all of us together with them, adhere to values of human dignity and freedom as an internal moral compass, which both objects to what is going on and also keeps alive any hope of repairing the damage. The hostages know precisely what the world is that they believe in, and this helps them to function as humans whose spirit knows to refuse what is going on around them. I can say this with the utmost confidence, as I work with some of the released hostages and have heard what kept them going. I think that this is also what is keeping us going at the moment, the values towards which we aspire. The image of the just and decent world that we await and for which we are tirelessly working, based on the hope and belief that it will eventually arrive.
"Our society is very sick. We feel that we lack the means to distinguish between the truth and falsehood, between institutions that uphold values and a world that is left on its own and without control. The accepted norms, as we know them, have been violated in so many aspects, that it is difficult for us to identify ourselves in the mirror of our reality.
"At the same time, I have also seen the opposite and extreme moving phenomena, of people pulling themselves up by their bootlaces from despair time after time to engage in a profound commitment to others and spreading love for the place where we live. I am constantly taken aback by the ability of people to cope with adversity, to give of themselves to others and to adhere to the value-based and historical significance of our existence in this land as a moral compass and as a hallowed objective."
That sounds quite optimistic, but it is imperative that we relate to the fact that our existence in this state has been severely undermined among large sections of the population. In your book, you refer to Freud's "uncanny," that feeling of strangeness and alienation in a familiar and intimate environment. On occasions, we might get the feeling that the state has morphed into the "uncanny."
"There is a profound feeling of a home that we loved, that has rapidly changed its face – we can no longer identify the front door, the windows, the stairway, nor the pictures on the wall. The values are no longer our values, there is no security, and from the balcony we look out into darkness and appear to be consumed by it in despair. It is an extremely difficult situation, but I believe that we will succeed in finding our home once again. We will not give up until we do find it. The 'tablets have been broken' and we will rewrite them, but we will have to have a long and hard think about our new contract here, in this place we call home."
As we approach the conclusion, we really must speak about the manner in which we can build a mental dam to hold back the turbulent reality.
"Strangely enough, the inter-generational traumas into which we were all born – the Holocaust, the wars of the State of Israel, the mass immigration from the diaspora – are also a source of strength and hope. We have managed to come out of immensely large-scale crises and we have a story to tell. The story is a pillar, it is the justification, the moral compass, and we have a history of moving on from catastrophe to recovery, time and time again. I fully believe that this will be the case this time too. People say 'everything is rotten' – that is simply not true. We have seen tremendous shows of caring and empathy from the entire nation, even if the nation is divided by profound differences of opinion. We know what we would like to happen. We have not yet found the way to get there, but we will. We will remain severely bruised and overwhelmed with grief for many years to come as a result of the unprecedented loss we have incurred this year – but we will find the path once again."
"Truth is the foundation. Before we do anything else we have to look the truth squarely in the eye. We need to assume responsibility for all the failures. To learn where we went wrong and what we need to do differently. Working with various types of wounded or injured has taught us that recognizing the truth and taking responsibility are a prerequisite for recovering from trauma. The truth, however painful it might be, also enables us to begin to repair things. As long as we continue to argue with the truth – paranoia and arrogance take its place, they seek to protect us from a broken heart and guilt. Recognition of the truth frees us from an enormously heavy mental burden."
Finding the way involves finding our feet, as in your article, based on two legs – love and truth.
"Truth is the foundation. Before we do anything else we have to look the truth squarely in the eye. We need to assume responsibility for all the failures. To learn where we went wrong and what we need to do differently. Working with various types of wounded or injured has taught us that recognizing the truth and taking responsibility are a prerequisite for recovering from trauma. The truth, however painful it might be, also enables us to begin to repair things. As long as we continue to argue with the truth – paranoia and arrogance take its place, they seek to protect us from a broken heart and guilt. Recognition of the truth frees us from an enormously heavy mental burden."
And love?
"Love is the strongest medicine in nature. Those released hostages tell us that what kept them going during their time in captivity was the love for their family, and the knowledge that their families love them and are waiting for them. There is a secret contract of love between both parties that compels them to hang on and ride out the storm. Love and the ability to see and feel for others are the basis of human ethics, especially when combined with the truth. If we are able to look at each other with love and with sober moderation, even through the veil of dispute and disagreement, we should be able to work together in order to get this place where we live back on its feet. The love of our land is also the source of our pain today, but it is also the doctor's prescribed medication for our ailments and pains."
