ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a description of a film clip from The Bereaved Parents' Circle. They are a group of Palestinian and Israeli families, whose children have been killed by the other side. These bereaved parents, in the context of a brutalizing occupation and resistance, are struggling to unmask their differences. The chapter identifies tensions, within that complexity that are being held by this group, through the lens of Western psychoanalytic theory. It discusses the distortions that arise when applying Western psychoanalytic concepts to non-Western cultures. The chapter presents diagrammatic representations of Jessica Benjamin's description of intersubjectivity. The first diagram, Intrapsychic Closed System, traces Benjamin's description of our search for recognition by the other, essential for our sense of self. The second diagram entitled Survival and Recognition and the third called Recognition and Alterity, represent the process of how we must retrieve our projections in order to recognise the other as a real subject who can then reciprocally recognise us.
