In his article entitled "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness", David Chalmers divides the study of consciousness into two parts: the easy problems and the hard problems. The easy problems are those related to neurological/functional/cognitive processes. In contrast, the hard problem is the study of consciousness which is related to the subjective experience. In recent decades brain researchers have joined the race to understand consciousness. Most of them adopt an approach according to which any advance made in the study of neurological activity is also an advance in the study of consciousness. I contend that the gap between brain activities and the subjective experience cannot be bridged, among other things because consciousness is not confined within the brain. This book hence proposes that consciousness extends from the brain to the body and from only from there does it burst forth into the world. One of the book’s main arguments is that the world itself serves as our best model, without any need for representation or a central control system within our brains. Therefore, to better understand the subjective experience we must examine how human beings are present and act within the world.

The words seduction and ethics, which at first sight seem mutually exclusive, are at the heart of the analytic perspective. Vivian Chetrit-Vatine takes as her starting-point an encounter, which is not necessarily consensual, between Emmanuel Levinas's thought and his conception of philosophy as ethics - ethics understood as responsibility for the other - and that of the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche, who posits the first adult other as a seducer of the young psyche from the outset, due to the transmission of enigmatic messages compromised by his or her unconscious. The analyst's ethical position is re-examined and with it the feminine/maternal origins of the human capacity for responsibility for the other.

In both these essays, "On the Indians" and "On The Laws of War", published here for the first time in Hebrew, Francisco de Vitoria lays down the foundations of international law as it is known today. De Vitoria develops for the first time concepts which will become the core of contemporary international law and international conventions, and in particular, participation in an unjust war, the ruler's personal responsibility for the decision about going to war, and the direct and indirect responsibility of subjects taking part in the hostilities. Both essays are firmly embedded in the debates of early modern Europe about the Law of Nature and the Law of Nations, and their impact on claims of European rulers to imperium and dominium (Imperial slugs and control) on overseas territories. In his wide-ranging Introduction to this book, Prof. Amos M egged places the two essays within the context and spectrum of the scholarly debates that were conducted at the major European universities during the early modern period, and provides the readers with a unique interpretation of the most distinctive themes in the essays, namely, the issue of human rights and international law, and presents personal insights on these aspects.

In 1895, Lewis Carroll, the author of the iconic novel Alice in Wonderland and a renowned logician, composed a collection of mathematical problems while he was suffering from sleeplessness. However, Carroll seemed to have overlooked a crucial paradoxical error in his presentation of one of these problems, which is analysed in this book, along with questions such as: Do men have more sisters than women? Why do people find their own coincidences more surprising than those encountered by others? How are life and death expectancies treated probabilistically? Statistics, probability, coincidences, randomness and infinity are explored in this book – a collection of essays written over years of research – through a variety of everyday anecdotes and situations, aimed at students, teachers and readers interested in enriching their knowledge of these subjects.

The idea behind the book After the Bell: The World of Leisure for Children and Teenagers was born following a national case study, which was funded by the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Education. Reviewing the literature for that study revealed a necessity for a comprehensive picture of children and adolescents' leisure world. This book was written to address this need. The uniqueness of the book lies in the fact that it combines theory, data and research findings from international and local settings related to children and adolescents. This book presents the essence of the literature regarding the nature of leisure, relevant theories, motives and factors that affect leisure choices, and perceptions of incentives and rewards obtained from participating in leisure activities. It concludes with a chapter on leisure education summarizing the knowledge on this topic as well as suggesting methods and means for effective leisure education. This book is intended for educational researchers, educators, student teachers, and school teachers. It is also suitable for decision-makers and educators in general as well as for anyone related to children and teenagers' well-being (e.g., educational counselors, social workers, psychologists, youth mentors, youth movement and community leaders).

Bearing Witness to the Witness examines the different methods of testimony given by trauma victims and the ways in which these can enrich or undermine the ability of the reader to witness them. Years of listening to both direct and indirect testimonies on trauma have lead Dana Amir to identify four modes of witnessing trauma: The “metaphoric mode”, the “metonymic mode,” the “excessive mode”, and the “Muselmann mode.” The author thus demonstrates the importance of testimony in understanding the nature of trauma, and therefore how to respond to trauma more generally in a clinical psychoanalytic setting. In order to follow these four modes of interaction with the traumatic memory, the various chapters of the book present a close reading of three genres of traumatic witnessing: Literary accounts by Holocaust survivors, memoirs (situated between autobiographic recollection and fiction) and ‘raw’ testimonies given by Holocaust survivors. Since every traumatic testimonial narrative contains a combination of all four modes with various shifts between them, it is of crucial importance to identify the singular combination of modes that characterize each traumatic narrative, focusing on the specific areas within which a shift occurs from one mode to another. Such a focus is extremely important, as illustrated and analysed throughout this book, to the rehabilitation of the psychic metabolic system which conditions the digestion of traumatic materials, allowing a metaphoric working through of traumatic zones that were so far only accessible to repetition and evacuation.

Early Modern European Civilization and Its Political and Cultural Dynamism presents Schilling's unique contribution to understanding the formation of the nation-state system in Europe. Schilling coined the concept of "confessionalization" - the consolidation of the regional churches and the deepening of Christianity into its nuances in Central and Western Europe, a process that began following the Reformation in the sixteenth century and led to the shaping of national identities. Within the framework of these developments, Schilling examines the effects of religious immigration and the role played by religious minorities in changing society, economy and culture in the early modern period.

MA'ARAG: The Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis is a democratic forum for psychoanalytic research, practice, and criticism published through the initiative and cooperation of the Sigmund Freud Center for Study and Research in Psychoanalysis of the Hebrew University, Israeli Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity, Israel Society for Analytical Psychology, Israel Psychoanalytic Society, Israel Institute for Group Analysis, Tel-Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and the Israel Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. This issue contains the following essays: Hila Elyakam and Devora Rosner-Wachs | THE ROLE OF THE BODY EN ROUTE TO BUILDING THE BIONIAN CONTAINER: INTEGRATING SOMATIC EXPERIENCE AND PSYCHODYNAMIC PYCHOTHERAPY Dana Amir | STUDIUM AND PUNCTUM IN PSYCHOANALYTIC WRITING Dana Amir | THE ‘NEWSPEAK’ OF THE PERPETRATOR: REFLECTIONS ON THE PHENOMENON OF SCREEN CONFESSIONS Dorit Ashur | FREUD AS “MIDWIFE TO THE SOUL”: THE RESTORATION OF MATERNAL SEMIOTIC PROFUSION IN H.D.’S ANALYSIS WITH FREUD Micha Weiss | ETHICAL PRESENCE IN THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ENCOUNTER: APOLOGY AS A POSSIBILITY Naomi Teller | TWO POEMS: TO CONTAIN DESIRE Moshe Landau | ON TRANSFORMATION FROM CHAOS AND BECOMING TO RHYTHM AND MENTALIZATION, AND THE RHYTHM IN THE TRANSFORMATION PROCESS FROM ‘O’ TO ‘K’ Rivka Matzner | PSYCHOANALYTIC CONSIDERATIONS ON THE MEETING POINT BETWEEN THE LURIANIC CONCEPT OF “LIGHTS AND VESSELS” AND BION’S CONCEPT OF “CONTAINER-CONTAINED” Ruth Netzer | ‘LISTEN TO HER’: POEMS ON THE ANALYST-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP Gila Ofer, Batya Shoshani and Michael Shoshani | WHEN ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS ONE: THE VICISSITUDES OF CHOSING BETWEEN TRUTH AND BLINDNESS IN THE OEDIPAL MYTH, AND THE FILM “INCENDIES” Gal Kachman | SILENT GRAVES AND TRANSIENT LIFE: ON SUBJECTIVITY AND MELANCHOLY IN THE WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM AND TOROK Victor Rubinov | THE CAPACITY FOR SUBJECTIVITY Merav Roth | TEARING UP THE LETTER AND THE URGE TO GET RID OF THE OBJECT Alejandra Sternschein | MY LANGUAGE, MY SPEECH, AND MY EXPRESSION: REFLECTIONS ON MULTIPLE LANGUAGES IN THE PSYCHIC SPACE OF THE ANALYTIC PROCESS Ofer Shinar Levanon | BETWEEN THE PSYCHOANALYTIC AND THE ARTISTIC ENCOUNTER: REFLECTIONS ON THE SHARED WORK OF THE COMPOSER YONI RECHTER AND THE POETS AVRAHAM HALFI, DAHLIA RAVIKOVITCH AND ELI MOHAR

This collection, already translated to many languages around the world, now appears in Hebrew for the first time. The Art and Science of Dance/Movement Therapy has proven to be a useful collection that explains the basic concepts of dance/movement therapy, written by practicing clinicians from several countries and perspectives. It develops these concepts into an understanding of practices, which are illustrated through case studies. The topics cover a range of human needs including children and oncology, problems such as eating disorders, brain trauma, psychiatric problems, dementia and more. Integral to the practice are systems of observation, understanding of cultural differences and research, which are also discussed. The breadth and depth will be of interest to those already practicing as well as to those new to the field or in related disciplines including education.