Dr. Avi Berman
Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis & Group Therapy

One of the most dramatic aspects of the digital revolution is the establishment of ubiquitous cyber communication. Not only has it facilitated interpersonal communication, rendering it both simple and immediate, it has also created a virtually unlimited distribution mechanism. Online, one can speak one’s mind to a vast circle of people, far exceeding one’s previous capacity to find an audience. Complete strangers have become infinitely accessible. This process also saw the emergence of groups of interlocutors, who congregate around certain issues, ideas or views. All kinds of materials are spreading about willy-nilly in cyberspace; people go shopping, deals are signed and delivered. At first glance, all that has been happening over the past few decades looks like a universal breakthrough; but this revolution is happening so fast that attempts to fathom its meaning are falling behind the manifold changes that keep unfolding before our very eyes.
The discourse on the online communication revolution often centers on harm versus benefit. Those who highlight its benefits stress that communication has been made available to everyone, in a way that eliminates class difference and breaches the walls of exclusive social groups. Therefore, some claim that digital technology has a democratizing effect (Law, 2016). People’s potential for belonging to a virtual group has grown significantly, thereby alleviating altogether experiences of loneliness, social isolation and depression (Bacon, 2018; Bainbridge, 2019). Many people who first meet on the internet form full relations later. Many get married. During covid-era lockdowns, social networks have proven that they can serve as a source of belonging, relieve anxiety and provide sources of relevant knowledge. Indeed, in many cases, social networks ignore the interests of regimes of privileged groups, allowing the sharing of information which had so far been kept secret. A case in point is Russia’s decision to shut down certain social media companies after invading Ukraine to keep destabilizing information about the war and its costs away from the Russian public. One can say that, in any field where many people share a broad common denominator – such as common identities, shared emotions, shared dangers or shared joys – social networks have proven their merit in bringing people together. It is a well-known fact that powerful and influential social protest movements have spread through social network communication, movements who’s exponentially growing reach had affected (and still does) the entire world. The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements are examples of this.
However, in recent years, we have become increasingly aware that social networks might increase and even create polarization, when it comes to the views of individuals, groups and different parts of society. Such polarization might, in turn, increase feelings of antagonism and lead to acts of mutual hostility. Indeed, content posted on social media often seems to be inciting against anyone holding a different view, delegitimizing them and even promoting violence against them. In this chapter, we will discuss the potential (and realized) impact of social media polarization on the emergence of a cultural climate of intolerance to difference and a plurality of perspectives, thus hindering the potential for tolerance.
I do not intend to claim that cyber networks have invented something new about tolerance that did not exist before. Xenophobia, incitement, the formation of opposing groups, the dictation of beliefs and feelings by vested interests – all of these have existed throughout history. It seems that the unique significance of cyber networks in terms of tolerance and intolerance lies in their massive distribution, now a World-Wide-System, and in humanity’s increasing dependence on hand-held electronic devices, that are gradually almost becoming a part of the human body. It has never been easier for interested parties to influence people remotely and the techniques for achieving this influence are constantly being upgraded. Election campaign headquarters or network companies are able to create closed societies and use these to dictate their contents to millions of people at the touch of a key. The combination of these factors might increase the threat to tolerance.
I will begin by demonstrating polarization on social media, through a talkback-based discourse on covid vaccination in one of Israel’s digital newspapers.

Tolerance is sometimes formulated in soft optimistic terms such as “containing differences,” "co-existence despite disagreements", and "containing the mistake and the mistaken other." All of these terms are suffused with the humanistic values of universal solidarity and the gracious expansion of one’s “Us” group by inviting and including people who represent the “Them” group as one’s diametric opposition.
Tolerance requires resilience and hope: the hope that constructive and benevolent coexistence with controversial others is indeed possible and benevolent to all. Hope is directed at the future and at a better future. I choose to formulate the hope associated with tolerance in terms of Winnicott's transitional space (1958). I suggest that the transitional space becomes a possibility for the inclusion of inter-personal differences. One can live with contradictions and the frustration they evoke, without losing closeness in relationships. Relationships in which there are two attitudes without one imposing itself on the other may survive possible tensions and may become mutually inspiring. In that sense, tolerance is a consciously chosen and active presence that may guide groups or individuals that represent disagreements and differences of attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.
Intolerance, on the other hand, is a personal or group position that involves resisting attitudes that oppose those of the group and sometimes even willingness to use force against those holding such opposing views. This force might include denial of civil rights, deliberate discrimination, exclusion and even personal harm and ostracism by state institutions. In situations of social conflict, intolerant attitudes may reflect Freud's description of Le Bon's mob behavior (1921) and the social aggregation within it (Hopper, 2003).
The disillusioned tolerance I address in the current chapter recognizes the threats and dangers of intolerant attitudes and strives to cope with them. Disillusioned tolerance takes into account the danger of the collapse of tolerant transitional space and the difficulty of preserving hope. I suggest that disillusioned tolerance is that which survives a crisis.

Contemporary philosophers Deleuze and Guattari have proposed the notions of “the tree and the rhizome” as two parallel worldviews and as modalities of perception and thinking and in interpersonal and social relations. We propose utilizing the notion of the tree and the rhizome in understanding the vertical and horizontal axes, respectively. We propose the tree and the rhizome as an inspiration for thinking in psychoanalytic terms, whether about the individual, the group or social levels. In this paper, we will apply these notions to psychotherapy, offering several clinical vignettes.

It seems to me that law of the mother, which deals with a mother’s protection of her children, should deal with discrimination. This chapter is devoted to an exploration of the phenomenon of parental discrimination in terms of the law of the mother and the implications derived therefrom for psychotherapy.

People come to group analysis knowing that the group is not completely safe. They choose to join an unknown, and in many respects unpredictable and challenging, interpersonal environment. "Semi-Safe space" in group Analysis is a co-created, basically safe and mutually accepted infrastructure, with the mutually recognized challenge of being and communicating in an unexpected and not fully protected environment. The group's Semi-Safe space represents one of the main advantages of group psychotherapy if handled professionally. Group Analysis is a potential space in which minds may be created and develop through mutual interaction, which is sometimes inevitably turbulent and experienced as unsafe. On the other hand, excessive unsafety might destroy the boundaries of the psychotherapeutic domain and become harmful or even traumatic. It is the conductor's crucial responsibility to create initial safety in the group. He can contribute to the participants’ sense of safety by exercising some authority in stating those boundaries and opposing any deviation from them.
This contract is based on reciprocity and exchange: protecting the safety of one participant in the group is equivalent to protecting the safety of the others. Mutual risk-taking produces safety while its lack intensifies doubt and fear.

"…the group uses its own resources …. The members of the group … are engaged actively in the therapeutic process and they are not merely “recipients” of treatment as they so very much wish to be.”
(Foulkes and Anthony, 1957, p. 82)