http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/920671.html

Two armchairs, a two-way mirror, a Persian carpet and a camera on a tripod stand in a small room in a newly renovated building on Tel Aviv’s Ibn Gvirol Street. Here, a unique center for studying the trauma of war and terrorism opened its doors last week.

The trauma victim who may or may not have been involved in the war or terror attack sits in one armchair. A psychotherapist sits in the other chair, mainly listening and occasionally focusing or directing the interviewee’s words. Researchers studying these kinds of traumas sit on the other side of the mirror, with the interviewee’s consent.

NATAL, the Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War, is modeled after the project documenting Holocaust survivors. Pychotherapist Yehudit Dor, of NATAL, previously worked for the Amcha association, which provides psychological services for Holocaust survivors and their families. The project, intended as both therapy and a research resource, was mounted with Erim Balaila, the association of Israeli POW

veterans, and is partially funded by Steven Spielberg, who founded the Holocaust documentation project.

“A person has a scattered, incoherent story in his head. The documentation creates an experience that can be understood,” explains Dor.

“A trauma victim concentrates only on the trauma, while the documentation leads him to talk about himself and his background. Then he reaches the traumatic event, which he recounts in a more or less orderly way, and we discuss how to handle it. This creates a sequence of past, present and future, and doesn’t leave him with the traumatic experience alone.”

Like Holocaust survivors wishing to document their experiences, trauma victims who wish to document their experiences have not necessarily undergone treatment. Sometimes the documentation process leads to therapy. At the end of the documentation, which may take 50 minutes or several sessions, the interviewee receives a cassette. Some of them are

unable to tell their families what they had gone through, so the cassette enables the families to share their experience.

The project is gaining momentum. “Just like Holocaust survivors who want to leave a legacy for the following generations, older people who want to leave something of their story, of their battle legacy, come to us,” says Dor.

The project partially fills the need to increase the knowledge and understanding of the trauma caused by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is one of the reasons NATAL set up its multidisciplinary trauma studies center. Thirty psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and criminologists have begun studying there. Among other things, students will attend a course on trauma from eviction, based on the experiences of people evicted from the Gaza Strip and Yamit.

Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Bina Levin says the trauma study center is the first to specifically train professionals in this field.

The center will hold courses for professionals, trauma victims and their families, and offer lectures, workshops and cultural activities intended to raise trauma awareness.

NATAL was founded almost 10 years ago by psychotherapist Judith Yovel Recanati, who is also its chairwoman. Initially the center was intended to treat people who suffered war trauma. “We thought we could treat wounds of the past; we didn’t think we’d have to continue to treat wounds of the future,” says Recanati.

At first the center treated victims of the Yom Kippur War, whose traumas were reawakened during the First Gulf War and their children’s military service in Lebanon. Then the second intifada erupted, followed by a wave of terror attacks, and the center had to adapt itself to the new events.

NATAL charges low prices, and treats entire communities, rescue teams and workers, teachers, doctors, nurses and policemen seeking to allay their own traumas or to help treat others. A NATAL mobile center has been operating in Sderot for the past year to help people who would not otherwise have sought help. The therapy is based on a model NATAL has developed to treat people who cannot leave their home, due to their mental distress, says spokeswoman Gali Dagan.

NATAL also operates a rehabilitation club where art, movement and cooking are used as therapeutic activities. There, its 70 therapists provide personal, group and couples therapy, and volunteers offer treatment by telephone.

“National fortitude is based on awareness of trauma and treating it properly,” says Recanati. “We are doing what the state should be doing, and it seems the state finds it convenient to have us do it.” Most of NATAL’s funding is from donations, 60 percent of which come from overseas.