Review of A Democratic Mind: Psychology and Psychiatry with Fewer Meds and More Soul . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017; and Psychotherapy for a Democratic Mind: Treatment of Intimacy, Tragedy, Violence and Evil. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018.
Reviewed by Michael Berenbaum
I have known Israel Charny for years and worked with him directly on the Encyclopedia of Genocide. We have fought on the same side within the Jewish establishment and the Israeli government to affirm the Armenian Genocide. In fact, we have a most unusual and very early connection. I have been a student of his father, who was the Principal of my Elementary and Middle School, and later of his brother, who was the renowned Israeli poet T. Carmi, at the Hebrew University. In fact, I studied the very same material with both as did he. I have followed Charny’s writings on genocide but not his psychological publications. At least in the technical sense, I am not professionally qualified to review much of this material, but as one who has worked deeply in the field of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and as a person who for family reasons has seen the limits and the problems with contemporary psychotherapeutic practices, I may have something worthy of to say about Charny’s work.
Charny makes bold claims. He argues that a) mental health must include both how a person is suffering and what harm he/she is causing to others as well as themselves; b) He is pushing for therapy that goes beyond relieving symptoms and seeks to cultivate people who can enter into respectful egalitarian relationship with others; c) He offers new concepts of psychotherapy for those who have been victims of violence and catastrophic loss, and d) He seeks to bridge between traditional therapy and the politics of fascism [tyranny] terrorism and genocide. His works succeeds in presenting these issues. Points a and b are central for him. He convinced me. Whether he can convince the field is another matter. He is quite experienced at c both as an Israeli who has had to deal with victims of terrorism and war and as a therapist of a certain age who has been required to deal with Holocaust survivors. His experience and his expertise have also placed him in a position to deal with victims of other significant genocides.
His writing is lucid and interesting. There is a fine mixture of theory and praxis and his work is passionate and lively. He has interesting things of say and he says them in a compelling manner. I am less persuaded by the fascist/democratic dichotomy; these are political historical terms which are applied in a psychotherapeutic context, and some may read them as name calling, yet I can appreciate the strength of his polemic. Psychotherapists, he argues, cannot be value neutral. They must treat the whole human being. They also must have criteria for successful treatment that are larger than merely working productively and living one’s intimate life successfully. We don’t need more Eichmann and Mengeles; we do need those who will resist them. He demands that therapy also confront the issue of the harm that a person may do, that it face the reality that some practitioners are merely supplying drugs to treat the symptoms without dealing with the underlying causes. His guidance in these matters is persuasive and compassionate.
I also respect the fact that this work has been written by a man who is now 86 years old who is knowingly closing in on the end of his natural life. So this book has the feel of final words of wisdom – and indeed they are wise – and things he wished to say but perhaps was too constrained to say because he did not want to ruffle feathers, disturb friends, add ammunition to the counterarguments of intellectual foes, but must say now before it is too late. Throughout, he is saying that “I have something to say and by golly I will say them directly, lucidly, without anger and malice but pointedly, directly and without fear.”
The organization of his writing makes sense; chapters flow from one another and I looked forward to reading the next chapter. Clearly written with passion, his passion drives the work and gives it vitality. The repeated challenges to the DSM Manual may become problematic to the layman but perhaps not to the professional reader. As a client/patient and the former spouse and father of client/patients my one encounter with the DSM was for insurance coding. I learned that arriving at a diagnosis is an art as well as a science.
I suspect that I am not alone in wondering about the “elephant in the room,” that remains virtually unmentioned and that is the economics of the insurance industry and not just the drug companies, since treatment is deeply affected by what insurance companies are willing to pay, and what treatments they will finance. Otherwise, drug therapy becomes a necessity and turns out to be far less expensive than years and even months on the therapeutic couch.
I heartedly endorse his breaks from the orthodoxies of his profession including not merely individual therapy but calling in families, parents, spouses and children so that the full dynamics can be explored and also the insight into “those, who while appearing sane, drive others around them crazy.” We all have known people like that and can identify with the problem, if not its solution.
In the areas of Holocaust and Genocide Studies that I know well, Charny’s research is well up-to-date. He has considered the latest works and his assessment of their importance and what can be learned from them is well balanced and well researched. Given what I have read in psychology, I presume that he is equally responsible and well sourced in that disciplined but I am not the source to vouch for that.
The writing held my interest throughout, I read it chapter by chapter and despite its length when I finished a chapter I was ready to move to the next. The writing is by a man who not only loves life, but loves the life that he has led despite having the scars and bruises that come with a life of intensity and living with the historical pain of struggling with genocide and the personal pain of encountering people in pain, himself included. Anyone who is not embarrassed to live in our age is embarrassing.
The greatest strengths of this work are its candor, its clarity and its courage. He is not holding back but challenging many in his profession. His writing is clear, his points well-made and he is unrestrained is espousing his point of view, generous to his teachers and mentors and those who research he respects and highly critical where criticism is warranted. I suggest that the greatest weakness is using political and historical categories in a therapeutic context also. The DSM is the boogey man in the room and I would say that as long as he neglects to deal with the economics of his profession and without dealing with it, too little real progress is possible.
In sum, Israel Charny provides a candid and critical exploration of the limits of contemporary psychotherapy and a passionate plea to expand its agenda to not only treat the individual but the impact that a person has on his/her family, community and world and the necessity of cultivating open, compassionate and engaged people who embrace life. I would read it again and assign it to my gifted students.
Michael Berenbaum was responsible for the excellence of the design of the exhibits at the US Holocaust Museum during its development and early years. Today, together with a design artist, Eddie Jacobs, he directs new projects for building Holocaust museums in many cities. In this review he evaluates knowledgably the link between psychological diagnosis and therapy to interpersonal relations and critical social issues, and although himself not a psychotherapist draws candidly on his personal experiences with therapy for him and his family. Word count 82