Memories of Joshua Lavie

Dear Shira,

Your initiative to collect people’s memories of Joshua is really a very good idea. It has prompted me to try and summarize the three decades of knowing him, a friendship of many years. I’ll begin with a quote from his valuable contribution to “Group Analysis in the Land of Milk and Honey”. Together with Avi Berman and Miriam Berger, he wrote the final chapter entitled “The co-creation of the Israeli Institute of Group Analysis: notes from the archives”.

           The Institute was established and exists today thanks to the contributions of many people. The committee members across the generations were people who left behind the comfort of their private clinics and their settled lives in order to voluntarily devote time and energy to building the Institute.

The first Academic Committee was chaired by Joshua and included Dr Sarah Kalai (of blessed memory) who succeeded him in this position, Chani Biran and myself. The committee was sometimes very divided, and while Joshua was not truculent or antagonistic, he knew how to fight for what he believed in. Once, at one of the Large Groups, Joshua let forth with a loud and juicy swear word. He would get very angry with attempts to denigrate or devalue the work that the committee was doing. His anger was expressed directly, with rawness even, and with no attempt at political correctness.

The committee was tasked with preparing the Institute’s study days. In those pre-zoom days, the committee members tried to meet face to face. Failing that, we wrote to each other on e-mail and met somewhere halfway between Jerusalem (where Sarah lived) and Ma’alot, in the north of Israel, where I live. Chani and Joshua lived in the center in Tel Aviv. While we were all active and contributed to the planning of the Study Days, it was Joshua who set the tone, who summarized the meetings with care and who maintained continuity between the meetings. He would listen carefully to our opinions and then suggest a democratic vote. He practiced what he preached.

When I looked over the list of participants in the very first Introductory course 1991-1992, I found the names of only a few current members of the Institute: Monica Tannay, Elizabeth Rothchild, Bracha Hadar, Sara Avin, and myself.   After the first course some very keen people joined us, and Joshua was among them. He had acquired a rich psychotherapeutic background from his time at the Ramat Chen clinic, and he spoke with much affection about his teachers there, Yehuda Fried and Eddie Rosenberg. At Galya Nativ’s farewell party, she spoke about Moti Benyakar’s groups at the Ramat Chen clinic. Robin Cooper, (of blessed memory) was another teacher and Group Analyst whom Joshua very much admired. Robin was a radical therapist of the Lang school. Robin’s passion for Group Analysis was enthusiastically received by many of us, and we saw him as a model for emulation. The loss of Robin and now, of Joshua is painful, very painful.

Perhaps the most meaningful experience with Joshua happened in the small therapy group that used to meet in his clinic on Bernstein Street in north Tel Aviv. Once the sounds of a Requiem wafted into the group from outside, echoing, in absolutely perfect timing, what we had been talking about. Bryan Boswood, an eminent therapist, who is no longer with us, Joshua and myself were the only men in the group. Joshua began to talk about English football, and Bryan responded keenly. I was not involved in that exchange.   When it came to time for paying, Bryan would lean back against the glass table in the clinic in order to write the receipts, almost falling over. The next session began with talk about the conductor’s fragility.

When Joshua was up north in the Galilee he would visit my home. We would go together to the market at Tarshicha, a nearby Arab town. Acting the tour guide, I would share with him some of the local juicy stories. He was always curious, wanting to find out, to discover. On the way to the Institute’s weekend retreat, he would scold me lightly for not working on my qualifying paper for the Institute. Weaknesses and strengths were the stuff of our talks together. He shared with me the strain of his divorce, his pride in his son Daniel, his delight in his young daughters and his love for Shira. We noted the passing of time, our aging, and the dreams we still wanted to realize. I recall that he was particularly taken with a young redhead who had joined the army unit under his command, David Grossman, the renowned writer. I was with him on the way to pay a condolence call to Miriam Berger, who had lost her husband. We updated each other about what had been happening in our lives. We did not know that this would be our last time together.

Three decades of collegiality, of friendship, of involvement in each other’s lives. The loss is indeed hard to bear.

Shira, dear girls, Daniel and other family members, thank you for inviting us to mark our loss by writing about Joshua.

Yours,

Mishael Chirurg,

Ma’alot, Israel

Kindly translated by Bruce Oppenheimer.

In the first semester of my studies at the Israeli Institute for Group Analysis, my teachers were Joshua Lavie and Miriam Berger. Their ideas and their style seemed to echo each other: their intellectual curiosity, their child-like, amusing and rebellious qualities became for me the essence of Group Analysis – a corpus of great depth yet accessible and without pretentiousness. The chapter that Joshua wrote for “Group Analysis in the Land of Milk and Honey” which I edited together with Robi Friedman, was informed by the same spirit. It was based on deep and erudite conceptualizations, yet was also somewhat rebellious and even blunt.  Joshua resolved to turn the Oedipal configuration on its head, to analyze it not from the viewpoint of the child’s difficulties or “complex”, but from the perspective of the parents. He wrote;

        “If we adopt a reverse perspective, if we turn the story “on its head”, we can begin to address some different but also crucial questions. What does it mean that our perspective only focuses on the children? Much has been written about Oedipus, but what if we look at him through the lens of his parents’ feelings, their urges and anxieties? Is his blindness a punishment for murdering his father, for incest with his mother and for fathering her children? Is there not another kind of blindness here? Is it not the blindness of the parents, who, like Laius and Jocasta, abandoned Oedipus the baby and mutilated him at the beginning of the play? Is this blindness related to the sacrifice of boys on the altar of power struggles, and fights for control between various nationalities and religions, and between contradictory beliefs?

Does Oedipus’ blindness actually represent the common blindness of us all? Does this blindness prevent us from studying the Oedipal myth to its full extent and depth? Does this include the fathers, the mothers, and even the entire community across generations? Why do we usually seek only to enquire into the unconscious psyche of the little children who were just born, and not into the unconscious zones of father, of mother, and of societies and their culture in general? Or, in other words, might we explore the foundation matrix which is transmitted through “cultural inheritance” and not via “biogenetic heredity” as is often thought?”

A few years later, I interviewed Joshua about his experiences as a Group Analyst as part of my Ph.D. dissertation.  Once again, what struck me was his rebellious spirit even though he had been accepted into and was an integral part of the professional “establishment”. He said that until he found Group Analysis, which became for him a professional home, he had felt different, an outsider.

“I was never a member of a youth movement. I was anti, I kicked up a storm, created havoc. I couldn’t fit into a youth movement.  I did an Officer’s course in the Israeli Army but I was regarded as a strange bird. I never submitted a complaint about any of my soldiers. I almost came to blows with one of them but I did not submit a complaint about him. I was anti-establishment. But my soldiers loved me – I was without affectation or pretense. Something in my personality – probably the result of having suffered at the hands of the Establishment as a child. I had had crazy teachers, it was like Pink Floyd and the meat grinder…….

When I was studying for my B.A., I was in a total panic, how would I manage to learn the material? I had no learning skills. Then I received the highest grade in my class, and I calmed down, and even began to study Philosophy. At the Ramat Chen clinic in the 70’s, one of my mentors was Prof. Yehuda Fried. He had set up a proper therapeutic community, and was a convinced believer in anti-psychiatry. He was in contact with the people who freed mental patients from the hospitals in the 60’s. From the cuckoo’s nest….”

Joshua came to the Institute of Group Analysis as an experienced and accomplished group therapist (Ramat Chen and Geha). However, it was only at the Institute that for the first time, he experienced participation in a therapy group. He described it as follows.

“Only then did I begin to understand what the problem was in my work with groups: I had had no experience as a participant, as a patient in a therapy group. I had participated in groups as part of my University studies, I had conducted Bion-style groups, with group-as-a-whole interpretations. But I had never settled into being part of a group process. I hadn’t experienced how groupness emerges, how strong links are formed. In the therapy group, I began to talk, I was a patient in a group for the first time. Previously I had been the facilitator or therapist, I had learnt what to watch for and what to say, but I hadn’t really connected. Once I connected – wow! – I began arguing and fighting. Today it’s not so important, at the time it was a whole network of connections with intense dynamics among us. When I look back, I see that this experience was extremely significant for me. As far as the rest of the training was concerned, we studied theory and we read texts. But it was the actual group experience of being a patient in a group that was most central for me.

Since I was already a trained therapist, I was continually trying to interject clever comments and interpretations. The less one feels about oneself, the more one has to make impressive interventions. The experience, and I am saying this again, of freeing myself from a position of therapeutic responsibility – an amazing feeling of being alive, being a part of a group. I felt enveloped, and suddenly all sorts of feelings began to emerge. For example, I encountered somebody who aroused murderous impulses in me. Afterwards we became friends. I had “killed” him in cold blood, and this allowed me to access memories, feelings about the Holocaust, about my mother. I reacted towards the person in two diametrically opposite ways, I wanted to murder him and to love him.”

The final quotation will show that Joshua saw Group Analysis not only as a therapeutic modality but as an integral part of his identity.

“It’s part of who I am, my identity. (What do you mean by this?) Listen, it means a great deal. It means……. I have particular sensitivities….my struggles at University and with authority figures who act arbitrarily…I tend to get into fights…..when I hear the phrase “parental authority”, I get violent…..I hear things on the TV, people who advocate punishment, and I get murderous.  I practice what I preach in my life and with my children. I always related to them with respect and without lauding it over them. I am not the only one who decides. Everything has to be done through open communication, not ex cathedra.

That’s one part. Another part is a deep understanding, which was there even before my training, that what happens to a person outside his home is also of paramount importance. It’s not simply a simplistic “he has problems with friendship because his mother…”. There are many factors, apart from family life, that shape one’s identity. That’s how I see the world.”

To his partner, Shira, to his son, Daniel and his three charming daughters, Liri, Harmony and Melody, I want to say that you were blessed with a very special partner and father. He influenced me and many others. It is very sad that he is no longer with us.

Yael Doron.

Kindly translated by Bruce Oppenheimer.

Eulogy to the Israeli psychologist and group analyst, Joshua Lavi

I just start with this – Joshua was a remarkable individual. We have met more than 30 years ago in reserve service in IDF psychology unit. Also, he made immense contributions as an Israeli psychologist and group analyst. Joshua’s departure has left an indelible void in for many, and his profound impact on countless lives will resonate for a long time to come.

Joshua was a visionary, a compassionate friend and member of our community, and a guiding light in the field of group analysis. As a group analyst, Joshua possessed a unique ability to research foulkes and was interested particular in the contribution of N. Antony. N. Elias and P. De Maré.

Beyond his professional accomplishments, Joshua was a warm and empathetic individual who touched the lives of those fortunate enough to know him personally. He was interested in Israeli society and politics, and he loved music with passion, all of it. His genuine compassion and generosity extended far beyond the boundaries of his professional practice. Joshua had a gift for listening intently, offering support, and providing profound insights that resonated deeply with others. His presence had an uncanny ability to uplift spirits and inspire hope.

Joshua’s impact reached far and wide, transcending geographical and cultural boundaries. His tireless efforts to promote Group Analysis were recognized not only in Israel but also globally. He was a tireless advocate for mental health awareness, tirelessly working to reduce stigma and promote understanding. Joshua’s legacy will continue to inspire future generations of psychologists and healers, as his teachings and insights live on in the hearts and minds of those he touched.

At 71, he had his son, 30 years of age and in his new life he had 3 charming daughters 7, 4 and year and a half, to whom he was totally devoted.

And he had a smile, his smile.

Oded Navé