{"id":3290,"date":"2023-06-17T09:52:09","date_gmt":"2023-06-17T13:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nymysteries.com\/?p=3290"},"modified":"2023-06-17T09:52:13","modified_gmt":"2023-06-17T13:52:13","slug":"new-york-mysteries-com-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nymysteries.com\/?p=3290","title":{"rendered":"New York Mysteries.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n \n \"Fb-Button\"\n <\/a>\n <\/div>
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One of my dearest friends, a psychologist, emailed me this article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A professor was accused of antisemitism. The controversy has exploded into a bigger, messier debate about the future of psychology itself<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by J Oliver Conroy
(Carlos Bernate\/The Guardian)
Fri 16 Jun 2023 06.00 EDT<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is Lara Sheehi, a psychoanalytic therapist and psychology professor from Lebanon, a charismatic, caring and deeply ethical mental health professional, according to her friends and allies, or part of something \u201ctoxic, aggressive and narcissistically delusional\u201d, in the words of an email sent not long ago to more than a thousand colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheehi has never made a secret of her political commitments. Her influences include Che Guevara and the psychiatrist and anti-colonialist Frantz Fanon, and she sometimes sports a black-and-white keffiyeh, the checkered scarf associated with Palestinian resistance. Yet neither Sheehi nor her most caustic critics probably could have predicted the chain of events that followed a graduate psychology class she taught in October at George Washington University, in Washington DC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The course was normally held in person, but that day unusual, nearly gale-force winds were blowing near her home, so Sheehi decided to do class virtually. She was unaware that some Jewish students were distraught about a recent extracurricular event she had organized, where a Palestinian law professor had sharply chastised Israel, and had been waiting to raise their concerns. In a heated, tearful conversation, the students accused the law professor, and by implication Sheehi, of antisemitism; Sheehi rejected the accusation and suggested that the students were the ones suffering from unexamined racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The saga that began in that one-and-a-half-hour seminar has torn the insular world of psychoanalysis into bitter factions; sparked legal petitions, counter-petitions, investigations, ethics complaints, disinvitations, resignations, death threats and accusations of libel; and led the president of the United States\u2019 preeminent psychoanalytic association to step down, in April, in what he calls a \u201chuman sacrifice\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At every step, psychoanalysis \u2013 the intense school of clinical psychology, founded by Sigmund Freud, that studies our unconscious urges and conflicts \u2013 seems to have failed its practitioners. The two main camps accuse each other of bigotry, stifling free expression, condoning violence and betraying the creeds of their profession. Each side views itself as psychoanalysis\u2019s moral conscience: a superego battling an ugly id.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe lines have been drawn,\u201d Sheehi said from her home, whose location she asked to keep private because of threats she says she has received since the controversy began. \u201cI don\u2019t think people really get what the fallout has been.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From an argument about Israel and Palestine, the Sheehi case has become a larger debate about psychology itself. Are psychoanalysts neutral interlocutors, healing one mind at a time, or activists, diagnosing society\u2019s pathologies and fighting injustice? Can someone be a nuanced and empathetic clinician, and also take to Twitter to issue thundering political judgments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trouble has rippled outward, in open letters and listserv skirmishes and furtive back-channel emails. There are murmurs of purges, schisms, vanguards, coups. Analysts and therapists from a number of countries have weighed in, weaponizing the vocabularies of Freud, Jung and Lacan against each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some worried insiders get the sense that psychoanalysis is analyzing itself \u2013 and not very well. \u201cThere is nothing about this that feels like healing, or meets any of the ideals of our own work,\u201d one practitioner told me; a \u201ccollective regression\u201d has seized the profession, with respected mental health professionals \u201cbecoming babies\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychoanalysis was popularized in the US by Jewish refugees from Nazi-era Europe, and its practitioners today are often older, white and Jewish \u2013 a demographic that tends to be liberal on most issues except Israel. If that is the archetype, then Sheehi breaks the mold: she is 38, Arab and queer; a professional biography says she \u201cworks on race and white supremacy, decolonial struggles [and] power configurations in class and gender\u201d, and practices \u201cfrom a trans-inclusive feminist and liberation theory model\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview last year, she put it more bluntly: \u201cJoin the motherfucking struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheehi doesn\u2019t spend patient sessions \u201ctalking constantly about capitalism\u201d, she told me. \u201cWhat is pertinent is that it\u2019s always a backdrop. It drives suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheehi, whose childhood and early adulthood in Lebanon was punctuated by destructive Israeli military operations, has described herself as both traumatized and resentful of the way her trauma might become fodder for \u201cracist fantasies\u201d that perceive her as a victim. Last year, she and her husband, Stephen Sheehi, a professor of Arabic and Middle East studies at the College of William & Mary, published Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine, a study examining clinical psychology in the context of Israeli occupation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psychoanalysis, historically, was deeply influential on the fields of psychology and psychiatry, though its clout waned in the late 20th century as more accessible treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, came into favor. In the last few years, however, there has been a revival of interest: the New York Times recently speculated that analysis is enjoying a \u201cmoment\u201d, and a leftwing magazine of analytic ideas, Parapraxis, launched last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s definitely a new wave in psychoanalysis, with more radical politics, including on Israel,\u201d a practitioner told me \u2013 one of several, of the dozen I interviewed, who insisted on anonymity because of the acrimony aroused by the Sheehi controversy. \u201cThat shift has been in the air for a while, and there\u2019s a feeling that the shift is happening faster than some people are comfortable with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tidal change might be said to mirror similar revolutions in the media and progressive non-profit sectors in recent years: a sometimes rapid march through the institutions by younger professionals eager to diversify predominantly white industries and call into question what they view as hoary notions about objectivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new model of psychoanalysis has arisen, another psychoanalyst said, focused less on sifting the individual unconscious and \u201cmore on the notion that because of the society we live in we\u2019re constantly influenced by various forms of systemic racism, and that the goal of analysis is a calling-out of prejudices and almost a kind of re-education\u201d. In 2020 the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) established the Holmes Commission, an investigation into racism in its field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GW\u2019s department of clinical psychology hired Sheehi in 2014 as an instructor for required courses intended to teach trainee psychologists greater sensitivity to racial, sexual, and other identities. Sheehi also became known as a vocal member of the American Psychological Association\u2019s analysis division, Division 39 (which is distinct from APsA). She resigned from its listserv several years ago, following fighting with members she feels were bigoted, but was popular enough that in 2021 she was elected Division 39\u2019s president for 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have been collegial my whole life,\u201d Sheehi told me. \u201cThat\u2019s how I was able to be elected as president of a very large division. It\u2019s not like I walk into a room and punch somebody in the face, which is how they make it seem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September, at GW, Sheehi helped organize a \u201cbrown-bag lunch\u201d with Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a Palestinian law professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on the topic \u201cGlobal Mental Health \u2018Expertise\u2019, \u2018Therapeutic\u2019 Military Occupation and Its Deadly Exchange\u201d. Shalhoub-Kevorkian\u2019s talk argued that Israel uses global mental- health programs as a \u201ccunning\u201d way to prop up its military occupation, and called for psychologists to beware of co-optation by state projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

George Washington University. Photograph: The Washington Post\/Getty Images
The talk was held on a Friday. Thirty or 40 people attended, in Shalhoub-Kevorkian\u2019s recollection, and others watched by livestream. She was surprised that the talk was recalled as controversial. The students \u201cwere very engaged\u201d, she told me. \u201cIt was very pleasant. The questions were very good.\u201d She noted that she has lectured on similar topics at the Hebrew University, often to students who are Israeli soldiers, and has rarely encountered the same blowback. \u201cI think that American academia is becoming too neurotic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet some Jewish students felt unsettled, according to a legal complaint later filed by the pro-Israel group StandWithUs, and decided to raise the topic in Sheehi\u2019s class the following Monday. According to the complaint, they said that Shalhoub-Kevorkian\u2019s talk had been a \u201ctwo-hour diatribe\u201d against Israel that \u201cfelt like [an] excuse to bash Jews\u201d and left students feeling \u201cvulnerable and unsafe\u201d. A student said that the talk \u201cseemed to have little to do with being a stronger clinician\u201d. (The complaint also alleged that Sheehi, earlier in the semester, had told a Jewish Israeli student: \u201cIt\u2019s not your fault you were born in Israel,\u201d implying her nationality to be shameful; Sheehi told me: \u201cThat is not something I would ever say,\u201d and called the complaint a \u201cfarce\u201d.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The class was tense. According to both the legal complaint and Sheehi\u2019s account, she responded by arguing that anti-Zionism is not synonymous with antisemitism, and framing the discussion as an opportunity to reconsider assumptions and learn from each other. The students argued that Sheehi was minimizing the threats faced by Jewish Israelis and denying Jews the right to define their identity in a way that other groups are granted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI go out of my way to never \u2018shut down\u2019 disruptive or uncomfortable topics,\u201d Sheehi wrote in the leftwing magazine CounterPunch. In her account, the students \u201ccategorically refused to engage in genuine discussion\u201d; they implied that Shalhoub-Kevorkian was a \u201cterrorist\u201d who \u201cadvocated violence against Jews\u201d and argued that the brown-bag lunch was akin to GW hosting \u201ca talk that would discuss how black men commit crimes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Sheehi recalled one student saying, \u201cwould readily dance on the grave of my seven-year-old niece\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheehi disputes that she ever denied that antisemitism is a real phenomenon and says that she will be vindicated if a clandestine recording she believes one of the students took is made public. (She has also noted that the lunch event was optional, and held in a different building so that students wouldn\u2019t feel obliged to attend.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The situation deteriorated: the students complained to the psychology department; StandWithUs filed a complaint with the US Department of Education alleging that Jewish students at GW were being harassed; the university opened an administrative inquiry and hired a law firm to conduct an outside investigation; and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) announced that it would represent Sheehi, accusing GW of enabling a \u201chostile environment\u201d for Arabs and Muslims and \u201csetting a chilling precedent regarding academic freedom\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As news of Sheehi\u2019s situation reverberated through the psychoanalysis world, quite a few colleagues, including many who are Jewish, leaped to defend her. The GW case, they believe, is a cynical attempt to clamp down on legitimate criticism of Zionism. As an organization, StandWithUs seems like an ideological \u201cambulance-chaser\u201d, a Jewish psychologist told me; another person views the group as a \u201cproto-fascist\u201d surrogate for Israel\u2019s increasingly far-right government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(StandWithUs disputes these characterizations. StandWithUs \u201cis a nonpartisan educational organization\u201d that fights \u201cmisinformation and hate\u201d, its co-founder and CEO, the former family therapist Roz Rothstein, said through a representative. \u201cWhile we often partner with like-minded groups on educational initiatives, we operate entirely independently of any other entity, governmental or otherwise.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lara Sheehi with her recent book Psychoanalysis Under Occupation. Photograph: Carlos Bernate\/The Guardian
\u201cThe playbook is pretty consistent,\u201d Dylan Saba, an attorney with the non-profit Palestine Legal, which recently filed a complaint alleging that GW discriminates against Palestinians, told me. (Sheehi is represented by the ADC, a different organization.) \u201cAttacking critics of Israel on the substance doesn\u2019t quite work in the way that it maybe once did, so the move from these organizations has been to try and silence that criticism altogether.\u201d He added that accusations of antisemitism may be particularly damaging to untenured professors, such as Sheehi, or students entering the job market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GW\u2019s investigators later cleared the university, and Sheehi, of wrongdoing. (The complaint with the Department of Education is still pending.) But the psychoanalytic world was already roiling with scandal. People sympathetic to Sheehi, alarmed to hear that she\u2019d been getting hate-mail and threats of violence, accused their colleagues of failing to stick up for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A listserv hurricane gathered. Soon a deluge of messages was pouring in. Roula Hajjar, a therapist in training in New York, believes the controversy proved so inflammatory because the psychoanalytic field is Zionist to an unusual extent. When discussing other issues, such as anti-black racism, \u201cthe window is widening\u201d, she said. \u201cWhen you say \u2018Palestine,\u2019 the appetite plummets right to zero.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But others had reservations, particularly when old posts from Sheehi\u2019s private Twitter page, BlackFlagHag, circulated. In her tweets \u2013 which Sheehi says were decontextualized expressions of anger about Palestinian and Lebanese suffering \u2013 she called Israeli soldiers \u201cgenocidal fucks\u201d; urged Palestinians to \u201cthrow rocks\u201d; retweeted a picture of a Molotov cocktail; wrote, \u201cIsraelis are so fucking racist\u201d and \u201cFUCK ZIONISM, ZIONISTS, AND SETTLER COLONIALISM\u201d; and urged those who disagreed to \u201cFucking learn something\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the page, later deleted, Sheehi seemed to suggest that some humans are beyond redemption: \u201cIf you \u2026 STILL entertain for even a split second that Hamas is the terrorist entity, there is literally zero hope for you, your soul, or your general existence as an ethical human being in this world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People began taking sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the United States\u2019 two most important psychoanalytic professional organizations, Division 39 and APsA, are hardly unaccustomed to debate \u2013 the question of how to treat children who identify as transgender has been particularly divisive \u2013 the Sheehi case punctured some final gossamer of collegiality. The resulting listserv correspondence, when printed, forms a heavy sheaf of paper; the messages, all trailed by professional signatures, depict an unhappy marriage collapsing into despair and rage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[O]ur division is being ripped apart, while its president-elect\u201d \u2013 Sheehi \u2013 \u201cwatches passively to the bloodshed,\u201d Michael Singer, a psychologist in New York, wrote. \u201cThis is turning out to be a pathetic end to a once-vibrant organization. Dr Sheehi, we owe you our final breath as the life drips out of Division 39.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate has hinged on competing understandings of identity and victimhood, but also on something more amorphous than Israel and Palestine: that generational division between a new guard that sees resistance to reform as born of structural, and often unconscious, bigotry and an old guard fighting what it sees as a radical activist vanguard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheehi disputes aspects of this framing. \u201cThere\u2019s a way in which this generational argument is made as an escape hatch, and a rallying cry. If you say to people, in a profession that feels it\u2019s dying, that new folks are trying to come in and dismantle everything, it activates \u2026 annihilation anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon Mills, a Canadian psychoanalyst who has vehemently criticized Sheehi, told me by video call from rural Ontario that he sees himself as combating an unchecked leftward drift in psychology. \u201cParanoid and schizoid\u201d mentalities have gripped his profession, he said, with a cadre of authoritarians exploiting the vacuum to \u201ccastrate\u201d the leaderships of psychological organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February, a moderator banned Mills from the Division 39 listserv on the grounds that his posts defamed Sheehi. (Mills disputes that characterization, and shared with me a 1,500-word letter he wrote in protest, with an appendix of evidence organized in the style of court exhibits.) It did little to quell the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Greenspon, a retired therapist in Minneapolis, tried to play diplomat: \u201cDiv 39, as a gathering place for psychoanalytic thought, may be one of the few places where progress might be made on new approaches to this struggle. What threatens such progress is calling each other names and asserting diagnoses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClearly, this is a political battle,\u201d Singer replied, \u201cnot a psychoanalytic battle.\u201d One side attacks the other \u201cas reactionary and elitist, while simultaneously claiming a kind of warped victimhood for themselves as the misunderstood vanguard of the enlightened future. […] One would think [Sheehi] would have had the decency to call off her attack dogs when she saw them devouring the Division.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carter J Carter, an outspoken supporter of Sheehi\u2019s, wrote: \u201c\u2018Dogs,\u2019 dude?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWow! Are you for real, dude?\u201d Karim Dajani, a psychologist in San Francisco, wrote, also in reply to Singer. \u201cThis is a psychoanalytic forum not a forum for your racist diatribes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow dare you call us attack dogs, Michael,\u201d Kritika Dwivedi, a therapist in Denver, wrote. \u201cWould you type the same vitriolic, disgusting and racist sentiments if you knew your patients could read this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Singer used the term again. Carter wrote: \u201cSo we\u2019re doubling down on the \u2018dogs\u2019 thing huh?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A therapist in New York, Alaa Hijazi, wrote: \u201cI can say with confidence that the most hatred that I have ever personally or directly witnessed has been on this listserv.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alan Hack, also in New York, agreed that the term \u201cattack dog\u201d was inflammatory but asked why anti-Zionists were describing Israel as \u201csettler-colonialist\u201d when some Jews had objected. \u201cPlease do not invalidate my claim to how sad and triggering this is to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Referring to a characterization of Mills as a \u201cbomb-thrower\u201d, Molly Merson, a Bay Area therapist, accused Mills, Singer and their allies of wreaking psychic violence, splattering the listserv with \u201cfragments of blood and bone and body parts. The \u2018bomb dropper\u2019 can silently slip out the back, soaking in the pleasure of the blood they have spilled.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Singer says he was irritated at the other side for lobbying accusations of racism that left \u201cvery little room for disagreement\u201d. To \u201cuse that as your tactic doesn\u2019t really promote the kind of conversation that psychoanalysis is known for, which is a self-aware, introspective, mulling-over\u201d, he told me. Psychoanalysis has slipped into irrelevance, he said. \u201cI\u2019m very reluctant to have us make our re-entry to the world stage as this kind of virulent political action committee.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the old guard is also political, and has its own form of identity politics, Carter J Carter argued when I reached him at his farm in Massachusetts. A group \u201cof us [have] been bringing a critique to our field that is more critical of white supremacy, of capitalism, of the ways in which our profession conducts itself\u201d, he said. Their opponents think that \u201cif they can just establish that we\u2019re the \u2018real bigots,\u2019 we\u2019re just gonna go back under the rock that we came from\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon the controversy\u2019s center of gravity began to shift from Division 39, where Sheehi had been elected president, to APsA. Unlike Division 39, which is functionally open to anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis, APsA has historically been more exclusionary: the organization only began admitting non-psychiatrists in 1988, after a legal battle, and gay analysts in 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, the new guard had gained a significant foothold in APsA\u2019s program committee, which organizes panels and conferences for the association. Observers were impressed by the committee\u2019s programming and its commitment to diversity, though \u201cthere were issues with the way that they ran things,\u201d someone familiar told me. \u201cIt was somewhat despotic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February, APsA\u2019s program committee decided to invite Sheehi, who was also a member of the committee, to speak at a panel on \u201cPsychotherapy Under Wartime Conditions\u201d this June. The invitation was overruled by Kerry Sulkowicz, APsA\u2019s president, and the organization\u2019s executive committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were told that we were prohibited from inviting her,\u201d a former member of the program committee, Avgi Saketopoulou, told me, speaking crisply in a faint Greek accent. \u201cNow, you have to understand that this is unprecedented \u2026 an extreme measure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a letter to members, Sulkowicz argued that the invitation was \u201cnot in the best interests of APsA at this time\u201d, and said some members \u201cfelt uncomfortable with having a presenter who has been on record as making what some believe are statements that may constitute hate speech\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kerry Sulkowicz at a Physicians For Human Rights gala, New York, 2016. Photograph: Thos Robinson\/Getty Images
Sheehi resigned from APsA: it is \u201cnot hate speech to advocate for the rights of an oppressed and colonized people\u201d, she wrote in a reply-all email, nor \u201cto call an apartheid state what it is.\u201d APsA is a \u201cwhite supremacist institution\u201d whose \u201cfalse and defamatory categorization [stokes] actual hate speech against me, threats of forced deportation, rape and bodily harm to me and my family\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She added, with the phrase bolded and underlined: \u201cI will not be complicit in this violence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The executive committee, led by Sulkowicz and Dan Prezant, APsA\u2019s president-elect, refused to bend. They also disbanded the program committee, which they characterized as secretive and nepotistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former program committee responded with a letter casting its disbanding as a \u201csudden and reactionary\u201d purge by forces \u201cworking, knowingly or not, to preserve the reign of whiteness within psychoanalysis\u201d. Many of the committee\u2019s members had already quit in protest, and people began calling for Sulkowicz\u2019s resignation as president. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee also sent a letter demanding APsA preserve any records related to Sheehi\u2019s disinvitation as \u201crelevant to upcoming litigation\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late March, after GW\u2019s investigation had exonerated Sheehi, APsA\u2019s executive committee retreated: it contacted Sheehi to offer what she and her allies view as a \u201cfaux apology\u201d, and said that she could do the panel after all. She pointedly declined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early April, Sulkowicz stepped down. His resignation letter argued that an \u201cilliberal, extreme left\u201d had seized control of APsA \u2013 putschists who chill debate \u201cwith reflexive accusations of unconscious or systemic bias at the first hint of questioning\u201d and \u201cseem to want to transform APsA from a professional organization into a primarily political\u201d one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also suggested a patricidal impulse, with the new guard requiring \u201ca scapegoat, ideally a white male representing authority and privilege\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sulkowicz struck a slightly different tone when I caught him by telephone in Vancouver, where he was attending a Ted Talk conference. An analytically-trained business consultant, Sulkowicz is one of psychoanalysis\u2019s more visible personalities. (He is also the father of Emma Sulkowicz, the former activist and artist known as \u201cmattress girl\u201d for her public protest against Columbia University\u2019s handling of a rape allegation she made against a fellow student.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt felt like resigning was the right thing to do, just to try to give them a sense that they had won and there\u2019s a bit of human sacrifice involved,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it really hasn\u2019t helped that much. I mean, it\u2019s helped me \u2013 I\u2019m hugely relieved to be out of that role.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During Division 39\u2019s spring conference, in Manhattan in late April, a truck paid for by Alums for Campus Fairness, a pro-Israel group, circled the venue with an electronic billboard with giant portraits of Lara and Stephen Sheehi and the question: \u201cWHY IS THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION HOSTING ANTISEMITES?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside, the conference proceeded unperturbed. Sheehi gave a well-received presidential address; her husband was a keynote speaker. People there described the conference as energetic, diverse, and, because Sheehi\u2019s supporters came and critics stayed home, wholly dominated by the new guard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheehi is by most accounts a commendable teacher and clinician, though \u201can activist, first and foremost\u201d, a psychoanalyst told me. And \u201cwhile I\u2019m sure this has been horrible for Lara, I think that there\u2019s a way that the scandal and the form that it has taken has served some purpose aligned with her politics. It feels both like she\u2019s the victim of something, and that she\u2019s playing out a narrative that she has some agency in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lara Sheehi at home earlier this month. Photograph: Carlos Bernate\/The Guardian
Sheehi rejects the activist-clinician distinction. Psychologists must move past the idea \u201cthat the material world doesn\u2019t exist in intimate relationship with psyches and with people suffering\u201d, she insists. \u201cAnd I think that there are a lot more people unwilling to bend that reality any more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one seems sure what will happen next. There is talk of forming a new, social-justice-oriented psychoanalytic organization \u2013 to be built from a clean slate and unapologetic in its activist stance. There are also rumors that the old guard might start its own. Michael Singer suspects the controversy will \u201cdie away at this point, because I think Dr Sheehi and her supporters have sort of won the day\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheehi, already president of Division 39, was recently nominated to be president of its parent organization, the APA, which has 146,000 members and is America\u2019s most important and powerful psychology organization. She withdrew from consideration, she told me, for fear of further harassment. She has been teaching her latest course remotely, due to security concerns, and says that pro-Israel protesters have been tracking her location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost everyone I interviewed despaired at their profession\u2019s inability to cope with the kind of conflict that mental health professionals are charged with alleviating. The saga feels like a surrender \u201cto the kind of rhetoric and brokenness that\u2019s represented all around us, in the world, that we\u2019re supposedly trying to help people fix,\u201d an analyst I spoke to said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another analyst argued that clinicians are entitled to opinions \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s not fair for someone to have to be a clinical psychologist 24\/7, in all contexts\u201d \u2013 but added, \u201cPersonally, I would die before any of my patients had direct access to my political views.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked the analyst to diagnose their industry. Laughter that sounded like sobbing came from the telephone. \u201cInstinctively, I want to say psychotic?\u201d<\/p>\n

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