Tolerance - A Concept in Crisis: Psychoanalytic, Group Analytic, and Socio-Cultural Perspectives

This book examines tolerance as a concept under crisis, exploring its origin and functions, and how it can be at risk of replacement by moral intolerance or retributive justice in turbulent societies.

Tolerance - A Concept in Crisis considers the contributions that can be made to understanding and elaborating tolerance, and its counterpart intolerance, by psychoanalysis and group analysis. The contributors, representing a range of countries, backgrounds, and specialisms, consider five key themes: conceptual and emotional challenges, tolerance and psychoanalysis, tolerance and group analysis, tolerance and the socio-political, and tolerance and intolerance in organizations and institutes. The project suggests that tolerance is an outcome of developmental processes (emotional, intrapsychic, intersubjective, and social) to agree and contain disagreement as part of mutual belonging. It also considers how it might be taken too far. The concept of tolerance is examined through its valid contributions to diversity and reduction of discrimination, promoting reflexive scepticism, critical pluralism, and durable forgiveness.

Tolerance - A Concept in Crisis will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and group analysts facing issues of conflict and its resolutions, as well as other professionals who are seeking new perspectives on tolerance.

Avi Berman, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, training analyst and a group analyst. He is a member of the Tel Aviv Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and The Israeli Institute of Group Analysis. Avi is the initiator and co-founder of the Israeli Institute of Group Analysis and its first chairperson. He is the head of the group psychotherapy track in Tel Aviv University’s psychotherapy program. He is a co-editor of Sibling Relations and the Horizontal Axis in Theory and Practice (Routledge).

Gila Ofer, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, training psychoanalyst and group analyst. She is the co-founder of the Tel Aviv Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and past chairperson. Gila is the founding member of the Israeli Institute of Group Analysis, as well as a teacher and supervisor at both institutes and in the psychotherapy program in Tel Aviv University. She is the editor of A Bridge Over Troubled Water: Conflicts and Reconciliation in Groups and Society (Routledge).