Merav Roth, PhD, 2024
/Professor Merav Roth’s pioneering work has employed innovative applications of traditional and novel psychoanalytic thought, and the study and treatment of individual and collective trauma.
In the last decade, Professor Roth’s novel approach to psychoanalysis and literature has given readers a better understanding of the deep psychic processes involved in reading. In her first book, A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature - Reading the Reader (Routledge, 2020), Roth described the unconscious processes involved in reading literature. She has also written extensively on Holocaust literary works and on civil standing, human spirit and resilience in the face of evil and injustice - all from a Kleinian perspective, highlighting one’s challenge to avoid vengeance and promote human solidarity.
She founded psychoanalytic psychotherapy clinics for disadvantaged populations and promoted pioneering psychoanalytic work with trauma. With two colleagues, after October 7 events in Israel, she formed a philanthropic network of 450 psychoanalysts who provide expertise and pro-bono, long-term therapy for survivors and their family members. As the former chair of the psychoanalytic psychotherapy program at Tel Aviv University, Roth established and still chairs “The Clinic For All” which provides pro-bono psychotherapy for deprived or disadvantaged populations. As a professor at the University of Haifa, she established a new philanthropic initiative, “Interweaving,” a culturally sensitive clinic for diverse disadvantaged populations.