Prof. Aner Guvrin and Dr. Sharon Ziv Beiman talk with Dr. Avi Berman and Dr. Gila Ofer about a book they edited that was published by Routledge.

At a time when the world is facing increasing polarization, rising populism, and deep identity crises, and in Israel - in the shadow of the trauma of October 7 and the widening social rifts - the question of tolerance takes on a new critical significance, both in the treatment room and in the social space.

The book offers rich clinical insights through cases of treatment in extreme situations, such as the therapeutic encounter between a Jewish therapist and a Palestinian patient in Israel, or group work in situations of deep social division. The authors also address issues of transference and countertransference in situations of significant cultural, political, and social difference.

The authors offer an in-depth look at tolerance through various prisms: psychoanalytic, group, social, and political.

They examine the mental processes that enable or block the development of tolerance, and how collective trauma affects the ability to tolerate the different and the other.

The book contains chapters by: Avi Berman, Ella Stolfer, Uri Hadar, Uri Levin, Ivan Orlich, Earl Hopper, Gila Ofer, Hanna Ullman, Chaim Weinberg, Liat Verhaftig-Aran, Lila Neveru, Martin Mahler, Noga Ariel-Glor, Anat Hornung-Ziff, Rina Dudai, Robert Grossmark, Shlomit Yadlin-Gadot, Tamar Ziff.

In the evening we will discuss questions such as:

- What is the tension between therapeutic inclusion and the limits of tolerance?

- How do you work with expressions of aggression and intolerance in therapy?

- How do you deal with the paradox of developing tolerance in situations of trauma?

- What is the role of mutual recognition in developing tolerance?

We will examine the concept of "radical witnessing" and how it can contribute to the development of tolerance in treatment and society, and we will try to understand how true tolerance can be developed precisely in moments of crisis and pain.

About the speakers:

Avi Berman, Ph.D - Clinical psychologist, instructor, psychoanalyst, moderator analyst and group analyst. Member of the Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Israeli Institute for Group Analysis. Initiator and first chairman of the Israeli Institute for Group Analysis. One of the founders of the "Besod Sheach" association for mediation between groups in conflict. Head of the group therapy program at the Tel Aviv University Psychotherapy Program. Teacher and instructor at these institutions. Co-author of the book "Victimhood, Revenge and the Culture of Forgiveness" (with Miriam Berger and Ion Orlitz). Co-editor of the book Sibling Relations and the Horizontal Axis in Theory and Practice with Smadar Ashoch (Routledge, 2022). Co-editor of the book Tolerance – A Concept in Crisis with Gila Ofer (Routledge, 2024).

Gila Ofer, Ph.D. - Clinical Psychologist, Psychoanalyst Supervisor and Group Analyst. She is a co-founder and former chair of the Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (TAICP), and a founding member of the Israel Institute for Group Analysis. Lecturer and instructor at both institutes and in the psychotherapy program at Tel Aviv University. Has a private practice in Tel Aviv. For years, Dr. Ofer was a board member of the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and chair of the Group Analysis Division, and later coordinated the activities in Eastern European countries of the European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (EFPP) and edited the EFPP scientific journal. A book she edited, A Bridge over troubled water: conflicts and reconciliation in groups and society, was published in 2017 by Karnac. A second book she edited (with Avi Berman), Tolerance – A Concept in Crisis Psychoanalytic, Group Analytic, and Socio-Cultural Perspectives, was published in 2024 by Routledge.