Between Us: A Psychotherapy Podcast

Episode 51: Belonging Is a Double-Edged Sword...

Release Date: May 28, 2025
Guests: Eyal Rosmarin (Israeli psychoanalyst)
Hosts: John Totten and Mason Neely

Episode Overview

This episode delves deeply into the complex nature of belonging—how it shapes our individual and collective identities, structures our sense of loyalty, and brings with it the shadow of betrayal and abandonment. Psychotherapist and psychoanalyst Eyal Rosmarin shares personal and professional reflections on the Israeli-Palestinian context, psychoanalytic theory, national trauma, and the tension between inherited and chosen communities. Together with host John Totten, they question the ideas of sacrifice, collective identity, mutual recognition, and what happens when belonging turns into exclusion.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Opening: Belonging and Betrayal

• The episode opens with a discussion about feelings of complexity and unrest in current times, segueing into the core theme: belonging as both comfort and potential for betrayal (01:15).
• Rosmarin reflects that the opposite of belonging isn't mere exclusion, but often betrayal—by the self, the group, or both (02:19).

  “The other side of the coin of belonging is not just not belonging... it’s betrayal.” – Eyal Rosmarin (02:19)

2. Revisiting Season Themes and Facing Critique

• Totten discusses personal regrets regarding previous episodes, grappling with criticisms around attempts to discuss Israel/Palestine through a psychoanalytic lens (03:28–06:18).
• Listeners' reactions ranged from deep disagreement to attacks on his character, exposing the difficulty of public discourse on identity and conflict.

  “I just never expected that the conversation would sometimes be about me.” – John Totten (05:12)

• The plan for upcoming episodes: more direct conversations with those immersed in these topics, starting with Eyal Rosmarin.

3. Social Contract, Abandonment, and Israeli Society

• Rosmarin describes the feeling among many Israelis that the government has betrayed its people, especially regarding the fate of hostages in the ongoing war (09:07).
• He frames abandonment as a fundamental part of social organization, notably through mandatory military service and the willingness of parents to send children into danger (10:04).

  “Societies scare us into submission because also they are willing to abandon us when it’s necessary.” – Eyal Rosmarin (11:22)

4. The Myth of Sacrifice and Cultural Narratives

• The conversation broadens to religious and cultural myths—particularly the Abraham and Isaac story—and their latent influence on our internal worlds and ideas of sacrifice (12:28).
• Totten shares a personal memory: the uncorroborated Columbine story about Christian martyrdom shaped his faith and doubts as a young person (15:03).
• Rosmarin links these stories and psychoanalytic theory (the Oedipus complex) to social mechanisms demanding conformity under threat of expulsion or violence (15:57).

  “If you do not align, you will be killed. That’s what the child thinks or feels.” – Eyal Rosmarin (16:31)

5. Identity, Belonging, and Ideology

• The group explores how identity is intimately linked with who we are aligned with—politically, nationally, culturally. These attachments feel existential and are hard to overcome, even when they conflict with personal beliefs (19:17–21:12).

  “Your self is defined—your identity is who you identify with, who you say, ‘I am with these people. I belong with these people and not with these people.’” – Eyal Rosmarin (19:17)

6. Personal Narratives: Growing Up Israeli

• Rosmarin details his upbringing: a father with long military absences, the normalization of war, and formative childhood experiences around belonging and questioning collective values (24:00–28:20).
• The first experience of being excluded for ideological difference: questioning religious-national symbols as a child and feeling the sting of disapproval (27:20).
• Later, as a teenager facing mandatory military service, he sought ways (including psychiatric exemption) to avoid serving for political reasons—a process both isolating and psychologically fraught (28:50–34:28).

7. The Immigrant Perspective & Unshakeable Roots

• Rosmarin reflects on leaving Israel, studying philosophy and psychology in the US, and the persistent pull of his homeland. He discusses how, despite detachment, certain elements of identity remain inescapable (36:22–39:13).

  “There are certain ways in which I’m Israeli, no matter what, it doesn’t matter how far I am...” – Eyal Rosmarin (36:33)

8. The Limits of Belonging—Rejection by "Home"

• Both Totten and Rosmarin discuss feeling emotionally—if not literally—rejected by their home cultures, and how belonging can be complicated by political and cultural differences (44:08).

  “Those places where we belong that are so dear... sometimes reject us.” – Eyal Rosmarin (44:08)

9. Invented vs. Inherited Communities

• The delicate dance between belonging based on facticity (ethnicity, place, religion) and the belonging we create with those who think like us (“my people vs. my people”) (45:05–45:44).
• Hope lies in the possibility of forming chosen, inclusive communities, rather than being trapped by zero-sum national or ethnic identities.

10. Global Projections and the "Colonization" of Experience

• Rosmarin critiques the extensive global projection onto the Israel-Palestine conflict—each external group (US, Europe, the left, the right) invests its own anxieties, histories, and fantasies in the conflict, which further complicates local experiences (49:29–51:43).

  “We are objects of fantasy, of enactment, a Rorschach for anyone to experience their own troubled identities, their own frail social identification, their own anxious belonging.” – Eyal Rosmarin (50:25, quoting from his article)

11. Mutual Recognition & the Missing "Third"

• They discuss the psychoanalytic concept of the "third"— an external container that makes mutual recognition possible. In the Israel/Palestine context, this third is missing, making genuine mutual understanding nearly impossible (54:52–55:38).

  “Mutual recognition requires a third ... There’s no third in this situation.” – Eyal Rosmarin (55:16–55:38)

12. Moving from Melancholia to Mourning

• Drawing from psychoanalytic theory (Freud), Rosmarin asserts that both Jewish Israelis and Palestinians are trapped in national melancholia—unable to move forward because of deep historical trauma and longing for an irretrievable past (57:56–61:29).

  “The wish to return to something that’s gone is the essence of melancholia. It’s not living in the world, it’s living in the past.” – Eyal Rosmarin (61:29)

13. Rethinking the Self in the Age of Nation-States

• Rosmarin articulates a bold thesis that modern subjectivity mirrors the nation-state—obsessed with boundaries, sovereignty, and integrity, a way of being that psychoanalysis both elaborates and critiques (63:15–67:13).

  “A self is structured in a really funny way, like a little nation state…One reason, I think, for example, that secondness is such a problem with transgender is because it f*cks up the system.” – Eyal Rosmarin (64:36)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The other side of the coin of belonging is not just not belonging or being away or being separate, but it’s betrayal.”
  – Eyal Rosmarin (02:19)

• “Societies scare us into submission because also they are willing to abandon us when it’s necessary.”
  – Eyal Rosmarin (11:22)

• “Your self is defined…Your identity is who you identify with, who you say, ‘I am with these people. I belong with these people and not with these people.’”
  – Eyal Rosmarin (19:17)

• “Can we create the delicate, suspended space that analysis requires in the midst of so much trouble? …Is reality a detriment to psychoanalysis?”
  – Eyal Rosmarin (quoting his article, 37:27–37:49)

• “I think it’s almost easier to divorce parents than to divorce your collective.”
  – Eyal Rosmarin (39:30)

• “Those places where we belong that are so dear to us…sometimes reject us.”
  – Eyal Rosmarin (44:08)

• “We are objects of fantasy, of enactment, a Rorschach for anyone to experience their own troubled identities, their own frail social identification, their own anxious belonging.”
  – Eyal Rosmarin (50:25, quoting his writing)

• “There’s no third in this situation. If we saw the miracles, there’s no…third.”
  – Eyal Rosmarin (55:38)

• “The wish to return to something that’s gone is the essence of melancholia. It’s not living in the world, it’s living in the past.”
  – Eyal Rosmarin (61:29)

• “A self is structured in a really funny way, like a little nation state.”
  – Eyal Rosmarin (63:44)

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:00–03:28 — Introduction, belonging and betrayal, cultural references
• 03:28–09:07 — Season reflections, facing criticism, the challenge of public listening and discourse
• 09:07–13:43 — Government, abandonment, and Israel’s social contract
• 13:43–17:44 — Sacrifice, myth, and childhood socialization
• 19:17–21:12 — Identity, ideology, and kinship
• 24:00–28:20 — Rosmarin’s childhood in Israel, war, and early critical thoughts
• 28:50–34:28 — Military service, political dissent, and the struggle for exemption
• 36:22–39:13 — Immigration, therapy, and the persistence of roots
• 44:08–45:44 — Rejection by home, double-edged belonging
• 49:29–51:43 — Global projection, the "colonization" of experience
• 54:52–55:38 — Mutual recognition and the missing "third"
• 57:56–61:29 — Melancholia, mourning, and nationalist dreams
• 63:13–67:13 — Subjectivity as nation-state, imagining new forms of self

Flow, Tone, and Takeaways

The conversation is deeply reflective, textured with vulnerability, intellectual rigor, and lived experience. Both host and guest probe the boundaries of their disciplines—and their own biographies—to seek understanding on how belonging can bind, divide, and traumatize. Rosmarin, in particular, moves fluidly between the personal and the collective, always returning to psychoanalytic touchstones and their limitations in the face of national trauma and structural violence.

Despite the weighty subject matter, the tone remains intimate, supportive, and hopeful, ending with a call to loosen boundaries and imagine more permeable, accommodating selves and societies.

[Next episodes in this series will feature further conversations with both Israeli and Palestinian psychoanalysts working together on these questions.]

Produced by John Totten and Mason Neely, Between Us: A Psychotherapy Podcast