Post by Fr David Neuhaus SJ | 8 May 2026
An Intimate Exchange on Israel-Palestine
A dear friend in Canada suggested that I watch a conversation between two psychotherapists, one Israeli and the other Palestinian. Although I am suspicious of dialogue based upon individual trauma, levelling the differences between occupier and occupied, oppressor and oppressed, perpetrator and victim, I decided to watch and was deeply moved. These two partners in dialogue do not mince words about the ongoing violence and the need to bring it to an end. Furthermore, their attempts to stimulate empathy in a time of genocide and ongoing horror, do not blur the reality that attempts to suffocate such empathy.
View the conversation here:
Eyal Rozmarin (Israeli) and Karim Dajani (Palestinian) are moderated in their conversation by ROOM’s Editor-in-Chief, Hattie Myers. This exchange was recorded at the Psychology & the Other conference on July 14, 2024, hosted by Boston College and Northeastern University in London.
Karim G. Dajani, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist and a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. He specializes in working with issues related to cultural dislocation and displacement. He sits on the editorial board of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. His recent works include a special issue dedicated to the social unconscious and an upcoming chapter on race and ethnicity in contemporary psychoanalytic theories and praxis that will appear in the next edition of the Textbook on Psychoanalysis.
Eyal Rozmarin, PhD, is a psychoanalyst and writer who teaches at the William Alanson White Institute and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. He writes at the intersection of the psychological and the social-political about subjects, collectives, and the forces that pull them together and drive them apart. He is co-editor of the book series Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis and sits on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. His upcoming book is titled Belonging and Its Discontents.