Shmuel Erlich

With his organizational consultations Shmuel Erlich wants to contribute to a deeper understanding that organizations have of themselves, their structures and power relationships, allowing them to become aware of the role of possible corruption and regressive processes. According to Erlich, this awareness could lead to changes of all of these phenomena.[16] He believes that this is true for any organization, including psychoanalytic training institutes, as well as German institutes, which call him occasionally, as a supervisor or as lecturer.

Shmuel Erlich directs special attention to conflicts in which members of different national groups are entangled with each other.[note 3] In order to explore these conflicts, he uses the method of the so-called Group Relations Conferences. They are based on the model of the so-called Leicester Conferences which were developed at the Tavistock Institute in London.[17] The aim of such conferences is to help participants develop the ability to take on responsibility of various social roles. To this goal Erlich still feels committed, organizing conferences for different groups in conflict or being involved in their organization.

According to Shmuel Erlich, these Group Relation Conferences are intended to close the gap which usually exists between the view of one's own inner world – experiences, fantasies, and the like – and the outer world of reality.[16] To achieve this goal, a psychoanalytic and a social systems theory approach are combined. Through these conferences a place for conscious experience of a previously perceived role and the possible development of a new one is created. The aim here is to understand hostility as something that originates not only through the experience of external reality, but is also constructed by the inner reality. With his method Erlich wants to encourage people to think rationally in emotionally-charged situations in order to gain a deeper understanding of how social and political events influence one's mind and soul.[16] Edward R. Shapiro evaluates Erlich's efforts in his review:

When we look at the world around us, we can become really frightened. But our fears come from our minds, our bodies, and our developmental histories. So how do we know when we are afraid that we are accurately grasping reality? H. Shmuel Erlich’s brilliant effort to link what is in our minds with our outer world perceptions opens the possibility of a more complex engagement in our lives. Using the tools of psychoanalysis and social systems theory, he brings us from the intimacies of the consulting room to the Gulf War, the paranoid organization, the mind of the terrorist, the corrupt social system. He illuminates the fluid boundaries between external and internal reality. How do we move from the experience of an enemy we must destroy to one we believe we might talk with? How does the commitment to something larger than the self contribute to the creation of terrorists? These are not trivial questions. This fascinating book is relevant to all those who take the risk of living fully in our chaotic social world.

— Edward R. Shapiro, MD, former Medical Director/CEO, Austen Riggs Center; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale Child Study Center, [18]

In his psychoanalytic work Shmuel Erlich was initially dedicated to the study of the mental and emotional experience of young people and later researched in detail how experiences are processed.

After he had created the ward for young people at the Psychiatric Hospital Eitanim, Shmuel Erlich remained there for fifteen years. This gave him opportunities to study the quality of experiences of young people and adolescents. For example, the “Role of Denial in Adolescence” interested him. He suggested “to consider the development crisis of adolescence through the use of denial”.[19]

In order to endure and master the often extremely divergent feelings of strength, weakness and dependence and the simultaneously felt intensive regression needs, the adolescent uses the defense mechanism of denial, which can lead to splitting. A case study demonstrates an example of how this behavior of defense mechanism can promote or interfere with further psychological development.

— Psychosozial-Verlag, Psyche 1990[20]

In his psychoanalytic work Shmuel Erlich was not only interested in individual cases, but also how they are embedded in their environment and political reality. This is demonstrated in a case study which describes the reactions of young people to the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.[21]

Shmuel Erlich's scientific interest was directed early on to the question of how people process their inner mental and emotional experiences. He describes in detail what he means by such an experience.[22] It is constituted by the perception of external and internal realities, as well as by the conscious and the unconscious and it is then mentally organized. Erlich views the data of the external reality, which people absorb with their senses, at one pole, and the structured experience of their inner world at the other pole. In between the poles he describes a consolidation process. This process is both innate and “socially constructed”. Through this process, Erlich says, sensations are continuously “absorbed, digested, assimilated, and structured.”[23] This process, which is described by Erlich as “Experience Modalities”, largely eludes conscious awareness and voluntary control. The process has a major influence on the way in which people view themselves and also how they organize their relationships with their fellow human beings and their environment. He describes two ways of relating that are very different from each other. They are similar to what Winnicott calls modes of “Being and Doing”. If people find themselves in “Doing Mode”, their opposite partner is seen as separate and independent, and the relationship is based on “cause and effect, dominated by purpose and aim, direct and chronological”.[23] In contrast to the "Doing Mode" Erlich describes the mode of "Being" in which the boundaries between the self and the opposite partner fuse together. In the experience of the person who is in this mode, boundaries no longer exist. According to Erlich, this can lead to numerous conflicts in interpersonal relationships, and there can also be considerable difficulties in processing losses.