In this session, we will focus on the powerful clinical and systemic implications of the intensive and cumulative interplay between the collective and personal dimensions of trauma following the October 7, 2023 massacre, the war, bereavement, hostages, the wounded, displacement, and their deeply unsettling and reverberating impact.

For this meeting, we invited contributors whose chapters focus on the movement between the trauma of the individual and family and the trauma of the collective and society, as well as its clinical and social implications, to share their thoughts on the subject. We will invite them to:

• Characterize what is unique about social traumas and how collective trauma shapes personal trauma, as well as the power of the personal dimension in coping with collective trauma.
• Outline the mechanism of movement between the personal and the collective in extreme social trauma and examine its clinical implications.
• Discuss whether therapeutic movement between the collective and the personal is essential, or whether it is possible to focus on only one of these dimensions.
• Explore which therapeutic paradigms and concepts may assist in conceptualizing and treating the personal and collective dimensions of social trauma.

Professor Aner Govrin, together with Professor Sharon Ziv Beiman, wrote about the principles of action for the psychological coping of individuals and communities. The two, who initiated the lecture series that, as described in the introduction, served as the foundation for the book, outline the core principles that guided the development of the series and attempt to map principles of action in situations of collective trauma, which require movement between treatment in the shared communal space and treatment in the personal space. The principles they propose — committed presence, a sense of belonging, generosity as a healing force, the power of action, narrative as an organizing axis, and the unity of opposites: the importance of dialectics in times of crisis — may provide a foundation for the work of mental health professionals coping with collective social trauma. This work requires movement between addressing collective aspects and personal aspects, integrating social action with individually focused care, and simultaneously relating to the personal and unique alongside its social and collective context, while recognizing that the individual’s journey of coping with trauma is intertwined with the coping journey of the communities to which they belong.

In the book’s opening chapter, Between Individual Trauma and Community Trauma – Journey Notes, Dr. Yossi Triest describes how the “virus of trauma” spreads within the psyche of the individual and the community, disconnecting both the person and the collective from their humanity, thereby turning the trauma victim into a generator of trauma. He suggests that in order to cope with this virus, it is necessary to create a “recovery of meaning”: the creation of a personal, deep, and painful story that can serve as a bridge between the person’s inner world and the events of reality — however horrific they may be.

Alongside him, Professor Dana Amir, in the book’s concluding chapter, Reflections on Divine Providence and Human Providence in Days of Awe, proposes shifting our gaze from the “danger outside” toward the “danger within.” Amir describes the disruption of solidarity that has emerged in Israeli society, a disruption that replaces positive solidarity — based on freedom, plurality of opinions, and respect for difference — with negative solidarity that sanctifies homogeneity, blurs truths, and attacks all otherness. The therapeutic process, argues Amir, both for the individual and for society, strives toward recognizing truth and renewing free thought.

Professor Dana Amir is a clinical psychologist and training psychoanalyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, chair of the “Streams” Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program, head of the Master’s Program in Bibliotherapy, and head of the interdisciplinary doctoral track in psychoanalysis at the University of Haifa. She is also a poet and author. She has published seven poetry books, four prose memoirs, and five psychoanalytic non-fiction books published in Hebrew and English, including On the Lyricism of the Mind, The Language Abyss, Bearing Witness to the Witnesses, Screen Confessions, and Exile of the Speaking Body. She has received numerous awards for both her scholarly and literary writing, including six international prizes.

Professor Aner Govrin is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher. He heads the doctoral program “Psychoanalysis and Hermeneutics” for mental health professionals in the Program for Hermeneutics and Culture at Bar-Ilan University. Among his books are:

• How Philosophy Changed Psychoanalysis: From Naïve Realism to Postmodernism, Routledge, 2025
• Conservative and Radical Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Knowledge: The Fascinated and the Disenchanted, Routledge, 2016
• Ethics and Attachment: How We Make Moral Judgments, Routledge, 2019
• Innovations in Psychoanalysis: Originality, Development, Progress (edited with Jon Mills), Routledge, 2019
• Conversations with Michael Eigen, Karnac, 2007

Professor Govrin also edits two book series: Narcissus – Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Cultural Studies (Resling Publishing), and Routledge Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis.

Dr. Yossi Triest, PhD, is a clinical psychologist-supervisor and training psychoanalyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society (IPS; IPA). He is the former chair of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, head of the “Freud and His Successors” track, and a member of the doctoral committee in the Psychotherapy Program at Tel Aviv University. He teaches and supervises at the Israeli Psychoanalytic Institute and the Winnicott Center and is co-founder and co-owner of the Triest-Sarig Institute for Psychotherapy. He is also a member of OFEK (Organization–Individual–Group, the Israeli Association for the Study of Group and Organizational Processes) and co-director of the Center for Research on the Psychoanalytic-Systemic Approach (CROPSA).