The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin: Resonance of a national tragedy in psychotherapy.

Abstract

This single-site study looked at reactions of Israeli patients in psychotherapy to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Data were collected during the first psychotherapy session following the fatal shooting of the Prime Minister. Thirty-one vignettes were provided for investigation by eight clinicians. The patients' reactions were subjected to qualitative data analysis that yielded high intercoder agreement with regard to 20 codes clustered in four content categories: (1) object of reference; (2) perceived threat; (3) personal association; (4) affect. No apparent relationships between DSM diagnoses and any response patterns were identified, indicating that our subjects might have responded with grief reactions that transcended diagnostic nosologies. Our findings indicate, however, that subjects with a history of paternal child abuse were significantly more likely to respond in a unique way: they often identified with members of the surviving family or with the assassin rather than with the slain leader, explored anxieties about the looming dangers emanating from the Israeli

The Temporal Dynamics Model of Emotional Memory Processing: A Synthesis on the Neurobiological Basis of Stress-Induced Amnesia, Flashbulb and Traumatic Memories, and the Yerkes-Dodson Law

“…Colgrove noted that most adults could describe, in great detail, events that had transpired on the day when they had learned, over three decades before, that President Lincoln had been assassinated. Other rapidly formed, vivid, and durable memories have been described by people who experienced events of great importance, such as assassinations of international leaders and the terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001 (Somer and Saadon [28]; Christianson [29]; Wright and Gaskell [30]; Terr et al [31]; Kvavilashvili et al [32]; van Giezen et al [33]; Berntsen and Thomsen [34]; Curci and Luminet [35]). The powerful strengthening of memories of events occurring in times of strong emotionality was referred to as “hypermnesia” by Stratton [36] and then as “flashbulb memories” by Brown and Kulik [37].…”