“At what was meant to be a trauma workshop, the person leading it inflicted fresh trauma on me and on several other Jewish attendees"
Renowned psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, who has revolutionized the field of trauma, shocked an audience at a psychiatry seminar when he… pic.twitter.com/KOiKH8s63X
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 20, 2025
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Renowned psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, who has revolutionized the field of trauma, shocked an audience at a psychiatry seminar when he compared Israel's war on Hamas to the Nazi genocide of Jews.
The center where the lecture was delivered has now banned van der Kolk from speaking there again.
Van der Kolk later apologized: "I want to express my deep regret for talking about what is happening in Gaza being equivalent to what the Nazis did in the 1940s,” he wrote. “It was a gratuitous, offensive, inaccurate and completely unnecessary comment, rooted in my own identification with children in bombed out cities during, and shortly after, World War II.”
I'm glad that van der Kolk took accountability over his harmful words, and that proper consequences will take place.
But the incident is yet another troubling sign of the times.
More and more Jewish therapists and patients have reported staggering levels of antisemitism taking over the field.
Hopefully, the fact that he has apologized can be a wake up call. It's not appropriate for anyone to weaponize a people's trauma for politics, least of all those who treat trauma for a living.
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