Lara Sheehi was doing her job as a professor of clinical psychology when her criticism of Israel catapulted her into uninvited infamy. Bad faith accusations of antisemitism, reliant on obfuscating political dissent with bigotry led to her investigation while reports from news outlets led to her being disinvited from speaking engagements, stalked, and protested. Despite a letter of support from Jewish colleagues that included giants in the field of psychoanalysis, the controversy split the field in two- those who knew her compassionate work on behalf of the oppressed and those who scapegoated her as a danger to psychoanalytic innocence. It is this myth of purity that shapes Lara’s theory and resistance to the veil of mutuality and dialogue, which she contends too often obstructs the very nature of our unequal material realities. Sheehi challenges us to be vigilant towards misrecognition, the not-so-unconscious ways in which we commit to logics of oppression, especially those of us who identify as healers.
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Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely
Music by Mason Neely
Research Assistant: Rose Bergdoll
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