Some sociopsychological and political perspectives of the meaning of the Holocaust: a view from Israel.

: On the background of some psychological, social and political reactions to the Holocaust over the last 40 years, this paper focuses on the meaning of the Holocaust as it is woven into the social and political fabric of Israel today. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict receives special emphasis in this context. Through a psychoanalytic lens, the motivations leading both to the denial of the Holocaust and its usage in different areas of political life is examined; the usage taking place on different levels on the continuum conscious-unconscious. Such usage as well as its consequences encourage a holding on to rigid positions and to the past; this comes at the expense of dealing effectively with the present. Such patterns of behavior are in this way social mechanisms analogous to the well-known unconscious psychological mechanisms of defense. They are akin to other psychological phenomena, such as the repetition compulsion and the mechanism of psychological deployment. Clinical and social illustrations of these phenomena are given.