IDI Co-Chair Dr. Robi Friedman offers a report on a project he and colleagues undertook recently in a community in the North of Israel, which is on the verge of violence over a conflict.
From Dr. Friedman:
As we encountered in other places, e.g. Northern Ireland in the project “unfinished business” and as many of you know, having political and legal agreements need some continuation of work in the community, otherwise the legal rulings don’t really get applied in reality. Here the High Court in Israel ruled that in a Jewish settlement an Arab family of the vicinity can buy land and build their house. There were many who accepted and some who didn’t. These kinds of conflicts exist all over the world, maybe more in small and homogeneous places than in heterogeneous and large places. The uniqueness here is that this community agree willing to participate in a process during a whole evening with the help of 14 Group Analytic conductors from our Israeli Institute for Group Analysis. I would like to share more about the intervention model and open a discussion about the rationale.
The program was limited to 3.5 hours. After a short opening there were small groups, a large group, again short small groups and a short closure. The aim was not therapeutic, rather it was an effort to promote a dialogue during a conflict. Even though it is probably a one-time intervention (with a slim hope that it will be continued) still our main thought was to build a space where anger, anxieties and enmities are translated to words which are possible to be heard, as hope, as we often experience in group analysis, that violence may be then less in the community. The rational of the
intervention was to enable the participants to express their “public personal opinion”, what Volkan calls their Large Group Identity or maybe what Earl and Haim call the social unconscious. We think these are the voices which have to be heard ultimately, besides other, more individual and intimate standings and opinions, because the public voices are now igniting the conflict. This division between public and personal may be theoretically problematic, due to a hypothetically indivisibility between the Matrices, but in the field they are very clear. Part of our rational is that the LGI voice is significantly better heard in the large group. The setting was designed to go through a process of progressively opening up a dialog in which difficult issues can be increasingly talked about in public. This makes it necessary to express yourself in both the small as well as in the large group.
The Small Group is known to everyone, and for most of us it is familiar in its setting and its immediate fantasies of closeness and defenses against rejection. The large group (LG) in which political issues are opened is a much more difficult space to be in, because its threatening power over the individual and unconscious fears it arouse of rejection and exclusion. The LG arouses fundamental identities with the group, which virtually eliminates individuality in favor of selfless devotion to the one-ness and a need to “recruit” to a cause. Group Analysts know from experience though, that participation in the LG makes it possible for traning-in-action to take place, where one practices his/her voice, reflects on issues as anxieties from aggregation and massification, relations with the authorities, etc. It is in the SG, then in the transition into the LG space where the “princips” voices would be heard and the process of dialog with the different other would start. We did not expect non-professionals to get friendly with the
LG, but at least to use the communication there to understand better their situation and have a beginning of an talkeable interchange which they didn’t have before. People reported in the groups the usual process of avoiding and distancing from their foes, which amplifyed their hate, fear and differences.
The short opening and the beginning communication in the SG where set to provide some working alliance and security in order to enhance later a freer exchange. The difficulty arouse in the LG, although we understood how significant the materials were which came up and how relevant to the conflict. All participants could evidence the basic issues: a fighting community who doesn’t find its way in the integration of former foes and ethnic differences in peaceful times. After a ‘defensive’ LG, in which Hanni
Biran and me tried to name some of these basic issues, returning to the short but familiar SG provided again the participants a more secure space. There, in a surprising openness, they could reflect on many of the unspokenissues in the LG and finally they brought them to the short closure. It was then almost midnight, for many of us more than an hour from home. Besides the many issues which additionally came up – we had the feeling that the setting worked, in general, better than we expected. I also agreed for adolescents
to participate, because I saw in another LG project how easy it is for them to adapt to this setting – and also here their contribution was surprisingly positive. Besides some frustration of the LG conductors, the satisfaction of having worked with another dozen or more conductors from our Institute, who all came on a voluntary base, was enormous. Of course it must have also
influenced the matrix. The great majority of participants staying with us until the end might be some proof of it.
This model was tried out now some times and the feedback from the participants in the week after have up to now been really encouraging.
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