''The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege'' is a 2005 book by
Kenneth Levin
Kenneth Levin (born 1944) is a Newton, Massachusetts psychiatrist and historian and author of '' The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege''.
Levin is clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He holds a B.A from th ...
, a psychiatrist with doctorate in history.
The book applies psychiatric insights to the Arab-Israel conflict by arguing that Israel's reaction to Arab hostility is a corollary of the
Stockholm syndrome in which hostages come to identify and empathize with their captors.
Originally published in English, the ''Oslo Syndrome'' has been translated into Hebrew.
Synopsis
According to Professor Ron Shleifer of
Ariel University
Ariel University ( he, אוניברסיטת אריאל), previously a public college known as the Ariel University Center of Samaria, is an Israeli university located in the urban Israeli settlement of Ariel in the West Bank.
The college preced ...
, Levin, a psychiatrist, compares the acceptance of the
Oslo Accords by the Israeli public to
Battered child syndrome, in which the victims "blame themselves and are convinced that if they would only behave better, their parents would cease to beat them, without knowing that they will continue to be beaten anyway because it is their parents who have a problem and not they."
Jerold Auerbach
Jerold Auerbach (born 1936) is an American historian and professor emeritus of history at Wellesley College.
Auerbach earned the B.A. at Oberlin College and the Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1965. He taught at Queens College and at Brandeis Uni ...
history professor from
Wellesley College describe the book as "comprehensive historical description and compelling psychological interpretation of the “delusions of a people under siege""
described ''The Oslo Syndrome'' "attempts to show how a whole country can suffer from wishful thinking. A great majority
f Israelisthought the accords we signed with
alestine Liberation Organization leader YasserArafat and his people would bring peace. All it brought was more bloodshed."
Excerpt from the book:
"This phenomenon reveals great similarity, at the level of human psychology, to the response of children subjected to chronic abuse. Such children tend to blame themselves for their suffering."
Thus, he continues, "those segments of the Jewish community who live and work in environments hostile to Israel, commonly embrace the anti-Israel bias around them. And they often insist they are being virtuous by doing so." This pathology is "no less delusional than that of abused children who blame themselves for the abuse they experience." But, he concludes, the result is awful:
"All too often such children doom themselves psychologically to lives of self-abnegation and misery. In the case of Jews indicting Israel for the hatred directed against it, the misery they cultivate goes far beyond themselves, and ultimately undermines Israel's very survival."
"The World's Oldest Sickness," Janet Tassel, New York Sun, August 26, 2013
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Oslo Syndrome, The
2005 non-fiction books
Books about Israel
Israeli–Palestinian conflict books