Albert Moukheiber, Franco-Lebanese psychologist. (Credit: Bojana Tatarska/Allary Editions)
Great-nephew and godson of the former great political figure whose name he bears, this young scientist from Beit Mery, who lives in Paris, handles and articulates concepts with finesse and dexterity, around the issues of our time: Stress, burnout, dual culture, trauma, eco-anxiety, exile … With a clear and resonant voice, the 42-year-old Franco-Lebanese psychologist, Albert Moukheiber, opens up stimulating and varied perspectives for his favorite subject, the brain. Speaking with L'Orient-Le Jour, he looks back on his work, his current vision of the world and on Lebanon and its traumas.
How did you choose neuroscience?
I grew up and studied in Lebanon. But I worked at an IT company while making my parents believe that I was going to college! When they realized this, they encouraged me to enroll at AUB. I took classes in different disciplines, and I really liked psychology. At the time, I was a first aid worker and I enjoyed the contact with patients. I came to France for my master's degree and specialized in neuroscience, which combines literary and scientific disciplines. They are close to philosophy, we work on free will, emotions, rationality and biology, by studying neurons, neurotransmitters, synapses. By analyzing cognitions, we are interested in psychology; computer science is also useful: We do programming for laboratory experiments, statistical analyses. The first research I did was on virtual reality headsets, which were used to do exposure therapy for phobias (of the subway, of airplanes, of public speaking, etc.). As part of my thesis, I worked on eye trackers: My profile, a little confusing at first, became an asset!
What is the common thread between your multiple roles as clinician, speaker, researcher and professor?
The axis that structures the whole is around the questioning of how we acquire knowledge and how we form an opinion. In therapy, we are interested in the way in which a person forms an opinion about themselves, about the people around them. With my students, we ask ourselves how we acquire knowledge in a formal way, and how we protect ourselves from possible acquisitions of poor quality knowledge. In conferences, the question is how to transmit knowledge to an audience, often diverse and varied. In my work, I am interested in fake news, and how we form knowledge as citizens because it is this knowledge that will serve as a basis for voting, political and ideological commitments.
Three areas seem predominant in current French society: mental health with stress problems, technology (weight of social networks, fake news, addictions) and social issues (how to collaborate better).
What is your connection with Lebanon today, in your research and in your life?
I am quite involved in it, always and until now. I have participated in all the demonstrations since 2002. I regularly go to Lebanon, I offer conferences and workshops there. I participated in the last two elections as an activist, I organized discussion groups to see how to work better together. I contributed with several organizations, to try to make united lists, Mouwatinoun mouwatinat, Koullouna Irada, Beirut Madinati. I participated in the first demonstrations of Laic Pride and when my knowledge can help I put it at the service of civic engagement.
What are the effects that you note of the various traumas suffered by the Lebanese in recent decades?
As in other countries going through this type of crisis, we are seeing a disintegration of the social fabric, we are entering a system where everyone gets by as best they can. We are losing a lot of predictability, but our brain is a predictable organ: To be able to function, it needs to foresee the future to prepare for action. The purpose of a law, for a lawyer, is to maintain order, but for a neuroscientist, it is to provide a framework of predictability for the citizen. If I put enough money aside, I could pay for a trip because there is a law that means it cannot take money from my account. The law provides rules of predictability common to a group of humans so that we can live together. It also concerns behavior and cognition.
The crises in Lebanon have made individual and community life unpredictable: We have to fall back on something other than the law, such as zaims, wastas, schemes, and their volatile dimension. It is becoming difficult to plan one's life, and we are seeing an explosion of anxiety disorders, mood disorders, with all that this entails: less patience, more anger, more acts of violence, directed towards others or towards oneself. We eat less well, we are in less good health, or we take refuge in short-term pleasures (restaurants, nightclubs, etc.). The horizon is becoming much closer, we never know if the furthest will exist or not.
To cope, we must not forget that we are social animals, so it is important to create social, supportive groups and help each other as best we can, whether in the parallel economy, in a cooperative ... Getting involved, and especially at the local level, founding an association, is very important, while promoting ideological solidarity.
How do you organize your consultations?
For my Parisian clientele, consultations take place while walking along the Canal Saint-Martin, since Covid. Engaging the body seems positive at the level of cognition. Through teleconsultations, I have patients in Lebanon and around the world, adolescents and adults.
Many patients come from dual cultures, which is sometimes a source of anxiety, especially since 2019. After the two waves of immigration in France linked to the economic crisis and then the explosions, several people came out of necessity or because of significant trauma. They must meet the needs of their parents and/or children, knowing that society operates on a system of family assistance. Many find themselves alienated because they do not have a dual culture, but one culture.
We feel like foreigners all the time, another identity is being created de facto because of exile. The person rejects it, but the identity to which he would like to return simply no longer exists. The country has completely changed in five years, these people are trying to find something that has disappeared.
The problem is related to the degree of agency: to what extent am I an actor in my life? These last waves of immigration have been accompanied by a dramatic loss of agency. Some left because they found themselves alone, with no one who shared their values. It is not people who are leaving Lebanon, it is Lebanon that is abandoning its people. It is also an identity that has abandoned us: a country is not just the land, it is also the values, the films, the music, the discussions we have, the jokes, and there was a period when many people no longer found themselves in the country. And the more it is forced, the more difficult it is.
Has multiculturalism evolved in Lebanon?
What is clear is that adherence to Western values is less obvious. With the latest events, explosions, impunity of leaders, the perceived or real abandonment of the West, and what happened in Gaza, there is a more united, trans-Arab identity, a bit like in the 1930s and 1940s, before it became Muslim. With Gaza, there is a return to the fact that the West does not necessarily embody humanism.
With the demonstrations in Lebanon, some caricatured visions have been broken. The ideological division by religion seems less and less effective.
What are your plans for this busy fall season?
I'm releasing my book Neuromania, which is about this new trend of wanting to explain everything through neuroscience, and why it's a bad idea. It's an introduction to embodied cognition and to the political and ideological issues surrounding neuroscience.
For the coming months, and soon, on Sept. 15, I will be offering conferences at the MK2 Library once a month, the next one will be about my new book. On Nov. 25, a conference is planned at the Edouard VII theater, it will be about my book, and probably about cognitive bias.
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.