אלפנדרי רוני, ד”ר
Background
Rony Alfandary, Ph.D. is a clinical social worker. He is a senior lecturer at the School of Social Work at the University of Haifa. He leads the Clinical and Social Work through the Arts specialization programs of the MA in Social Work Program.
He was the Director of the Post-Graduate programme of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and a lecturer at the School of Social Work at Bar-Ilan University until 2022. He was the Editor of the book section of the Society and Welfare periodical until 2025.
Rony’s research interests are multi-disciplinary and include clinical social work, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, photography, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, the relations between language, creativity and the sense of self and belonging, and the impact of the Holocaust upon 2nd and 3rd generations.
As well as practising psychoanalytic psychotherapy, Rony writes and publishes poetry, prose and non-fiction. He has published eleven books so far in Hebrew and English.
He is currently working on a clinical book entitled: “Creativity and Psychotherapy at times of War, Exile and Trauma – Clinical and Theoretical Illustrations”, to be published by Routledge during 2026.
He is the Israeli delegate of the Israeli Association of Psychanalytical Psychotherapy (IAPP) at the Executive Committee of the World Council of Psychotherapy (WCP) and at the European Federation of Psychanalytical Psychotherapy (EFPP).
He is one of the founding members of the Israeli voluntary organization The Road to Recovery which helps hundreds of Palestinians children living in the West Bank and Gaza to receive medical care in Israeli hospitals.
Recent academic publications
2024 – Seeking Psychic Space: Fundamentals of Psychodynamic Social Work, Vol. 2 (Hebrew), Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing
2023 – Psychoanalytic and Cultural Aspects of Trauma and the Holocaust. London: Routledge
2022 – Postmemory, Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Ghosts: The Salonica Cohen Family and Trauma Across Generations. London: Routledge
2018 – Seeking Psychic Space: Fundamentals of Psychodynamic Social Work, Vol. 1 (Hebrew), Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing
2009 – The Invisible Wound: A Study of Emotional Abuse of Children, 2019, London: Lambert Academic Publications
2018 – Exile and Return: a Psychoanalytic Study of Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet, 2019, London: Routledge Books
2016 – Exile and Return: a Psychoanalytic Study of Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet, Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing (Hebrew)
Prose and Poetry in Hebrew
2024 – The Absent Present, Poems 2004-2024, Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing
2023 – I Will return, Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing
2004 – Being Doubtful, Poetry
2000 – Love is not a Punishment, Tel-Aviv: Gvanim
Selected International Conferences
2025 – 10th Congress of WCP, Vienna, Austeria
2019 – Island of the Mind, Crete, Greece
2018 – Inner world and outer Realities, EFPP, Belgrade, Serbia
2017 – The Research Center for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London
2017 – Life and Love in the 21st Century – World Congress of Psychotherapy, Paris
2017 – The Holocaust and its Aftermath from the Family Perspective, Prague
2016 – Crete – The Bi-Annual Durrell Conference
2015 – Barcelona, Spain, Psychoanalysis and Exile conference – paper: a clinical study of a lost city
2014 – Salonika, Greece – Remembering Thessaloniki – organized by the University of Sydney – The Reconstruction of the Cohen Family
2014 – Durban, South Africa, 7th World Congress of Psychotherapy – Authority in Student’s Supervision
2012 – London, England, The Lawrence Durrell Centenary – Durrell’s concept of the City as a Mother
2009 – Bar Ilan University, Religion and Psychoanalysis – Chairperson and organizer
