ABSTRACT
I have always been curious as to what influences a person’s decision to become a therapist. In Israel, psychology and social work are some of the most sought-after professions, and so it is reasonable to hypothesize that there is something about treating people that appeals to many. I made this decision at the age of ten after I read A.S Niell’s (1960) book Summerhill School (its title in Hebrew was The Family and the Free Child) which in retrospect has little to do with “therapy” per se. Regardless, it evoked my imagination and made me declare decisively: “When I grow up, I want to be a therapist” and this has led me through, ever since. Many years later, one of my students approached me and asked me to supervise her thesis research focusing on women who were raised in a kibbutz. Focusing on one’s career choice followed two major reasons: (1) Work was, perhaps, the most highly valued value in the kibbutz. Starting from the first generation of immigrants from eastern Europe who established the first kibbutzes at the beginning of the twentieth century, life was hard and the labor was enormous. But it was also one of the most fundamental constructs and values of the kibbutz community. Children, as young as four were expected to perform various tasks each morning, and much of how you were judged as an individual and as a member of a specific family was based on the roles your parents fulfilled in the community. Being a “hard worker” was one of the biggest compliments you could receive. Our choice to inquire into the specific choice of becoming a therapist was based on our perception that the therapist’s role has a lot in common with the maternal–parental role. Hence, I was curious about the choice to become a maternal figure, following childhood experiences of much maternal absence.
As I discussed in the previous chapter, children at the kibbutz were not raised by their biological mothers, but by women of the kibbutz who fulfilled many of the mundane maternal tasks. Moreover, the Hebrew word for “caretaker” and “therapist” is the same – “metapelet,” so perhaps even in this linguistic aspect lie some of the answers as to why these women, who were brought up by “strangers” chose to become other people’s therapists – “metapelet.”
