IDI 20th ANNUAL MEETING
Vienna, Austria – 13-15 October 2023
The Twentieth Meeting of the International Dialogue Initiative (IDI) was held in Vienna, Austria from 13-15 October 2023. The IDI was once again hosted by EUNEPA (Eurasian Nexus Partners GmbH), a strategic consulting group established in Vienna in 2010 by IDI member Bijan Khajehpour. This was the IDI’s fourth meeting in Vienna.
The Twentieth Meeting represented both an organizational milestone and a period of transition for the IDI – an organizational milestone in that what began in 2007 as little more than a concept by IDI founder and President Emeritus Vamik Volkan was still going strong more than 15 years and 20 meetings later; a period of transition because it marked the end of Gerard Fromm’s 7+ years as Dr. Volkan’s successor as President of the IDI, with Bijan Khajehpour and Donna Elmendorf taking up the leadership of the group as co-Presidents.
The Twentieth Meeting also came at a time of acute personal and geopolitical struggle, beginning less than a week after Hamas militants launched a surprise strike on Israeli civilians and re-ignited the long-smouldering flames of conflict in the Middle East. For the IDI and its Israeli and Palestinian members, this conflict is far from conceptual. Indeed, both Israeli members and the sole Palestinian member of the IDI were unable to attend the Twentieth Meeting in person due to the conflict, with one member suffering a significant personal loss.
Finally, the Twentieth Meeting represented the IDI’s first collective opportunity to mourn the passing of cherished long-time member Coline Covington, who died in June 2023 after a brief illness. As the IDI noted at the time of her passing, Coline brought warmth, humanity and enormous intellectual strength to everything she did. It was a privilege to count her in our ranks.
What follows is a summary of presentations, themes and observations.
SUMMARY
Pre-Meeting Workshop
Prior to commencing the Twentieth Meeting, IDI members Gerard Fromm, Director of Training Regine Scholz, Vamik Volkan and Anna Zajenkowska conducted a one-day workshop entitled “Understanding and Intervening with Societal Conflict” at the EUNEPA offices. This training workshop introduced participants to IDI methods for recognizing large group identity issues within conflict situations, including through reflections on one’s own life. There were 8 participants for this training workshop, a version of which the IDI offers regularly. Through these training workshops, the IDI has now worked with dozens of participants all over the world. More information on future training workshops is available on the IDI website under “Training.”
IDI General Meeting: Day One
Introductions
On Friday, October 13th, the IDI formally commenced its Twentieth Meeting. A total of thirteen members were present in person at the start of the three-day conference, including new IDI members, Drs. Anna Zajenkowska and Peter McBride, and Volkan Scholar Lydia Wilson, culture editor at New Lines magazine[1]and a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Middle Eastern Studies.
Several others, including colleagues from Russia, the United States and the Middle East, joined remotely, to bring the total number of participants to nineteen. President Emeritus Vamik Volkan attended from his home in the US. Three IDI members were unable to attend either in person or remotely – two due to significant personal matters related to the conflict in Israel and one due to health concerns.
Rather than begin in its customary form, IDI President Gerard Fromm began the meeting with a period of remembrance for Coline Covington. Several members spoke of Coline’s impact on them, both personally and professionally, and on the IDI as a group. Coline’s last work for the IDI was an effort to create and inaugurate a discussion series entitled The Psychology of Societal Conflict, the first session of which was to have been a moderated discussion with Lord David Owen, former Foreign Secretary for the British Government and chief EU peace negotiator in the former Yugoslavia (among many other roles). This inaugural discussion went forward in November 2023, with Gerard Fromm as discussant and Regine Scholz as moderator, and was dedicated to Coline.
The IDI also took time at the beginning of its Twentieth Meeting to recognize the profound personal and psychological weight of the renewed conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants. The IDI took account of the intra-group anxiety, despair and pain caused by the renewal of this conflict, which is one that the IDI has spent considerable time and effort trying to understand over the course of its meetings. The IDI also considered the nihilism and desperation attendant to the Hamas attack and the terror and annihilation anxieties it generated within the Israeli population. Secondary concerns included consideration of the strategic aims of such an attack and possible effects on Israel’s internal politics and diplomatic relations in the region. An Israeli IDI member, who had been planning to attend the Twentieth Meeting in person, was unable to attend due to a family tragedy related to the Hamas attack. A Palestinian IDI member in East Jerusalem, who had similarly been planning to attend in person, was unable to do so due to curfews and travel disruptions caused by the Hamas attack and aftermath. While the Palestinian member was able to join remotely for brief sections of the meeting and share her perspective and experience, the Israeli member had to attend to the needs of his immediate family and was unable to participate. Through email communications, he shared his deeply personal pain and the strength required to soldier on. IDI members sent their support and love to both.
Themes, Outlooks, Individual and Group Engagements
Within that difficult framework, the IDI commenced its Twentieth Meeting.
This first session began with IDI members describing their activities during the preceding year, projects on which they were working, their outlooks both for those projects and more generally for their communities, and themes resonating throughout their experiences. Several members discussed their families, the passage of time, the importance of next generations taking up their own authority. One Iranian member based in London mentioned the centrality of his devotion to his two grandchildren, a devotion that echoed within his observations of the feminist and “Gen Z” activists demonstrating in Tehran and throughout Iran. A Turkish member discussed her work as founder of Nexchange, a U.S.-based cultural nonprofit group building relationships between and among diaspora groups through culinary and cultural exchanges. A founding member discussed health challenges that kept him from attending. Another member noted that the pandemic had brought families back together, which was wonderful, and vaccinations had enabled those families to separate again, which was also (and differently) wonderful.
Members also discussed circumstances of stagnation and progress within their political circles. A member discussed the collapse of the government in Northern Ireland, triggered by the Protestant/Unionist wing feeling Brexit-related disaffection for (and from) Great Britain. The paralysis of political processes (and progress) meant schools and services were beginning to collapse, streetlights beginning to stay dark. This member noted that there may be no “Berlin Wall” moment for Northern Ireland, but that there was a steady (sleepy) creep toward inevitable reunification.
Another member noted his “generally positive view” of “a slouch toward reunification” as the relationship between Britain and Northern Ireland continued to wither. “Those who depended on it are now orphans,” he noted.
Another Iranian member discussed informal diplomacy efforts between Iran and Saudi Arabia and interesting diplomatic work-arounds relating to Iran’s efforts to access currency frozen in foreign banks. Iran, in the region, appears to have found partners with whom to work: Iraq, Qatar, Saudi. This member also discussed the “very good” architecture of the JCPOA and noted that over the past 40 years, Iran has always made a deal with a U.S. President during his second term. U.S. hopes to limit Iranian nuclear activity are perhaps dependent on this trend continuing.
A Turkish member, working at the intersection of politics and academics in Istanbul, noted the challenges Turkey faces both with its geographical neighbors and as it seeks to play a mediating role between larger powers, particularly between Russia and China. She discussed the difficulty the current Turkish government faces in maintaining a position of moderation.
A German member began her reflections on the last year by stating “I don’t really know what is going on.” She noted that the current German government was a fragile construct of the Green Party and social democrats operating from a professed “very high moral standard” but still faced with certain realities. She noted a constant “urge to do something immediately” and the sense that one who hesitates to “do something” is labeled a coward. She noted her personal unpreparedness for what she felt to be a “loss of trust in the task” and her disappointment in faith being placed in “whoever is the loudest.”
This member noted that the driving force for the German far right AFD party remained the issue of migration. Antisemitism and racism were on the rise in Germany, and with them feelings of tension and anxiety. These feelings were exacerbated by an infrastructure crisis – trains not running on time, schools underdeveloped, graduates unable to find jobs. These shortcomings, both real and perceived, struck at Germany’s central conception of itself as a functional and self-sufficient entity.
A Polish member spoke of the anxiety and hope she was seeing in her practice, and in herself, ahead of national elections. All three of the opposition parties needed to win their elections – scheduled for that Sunday – to effect a change in the national political position and depose the prior administration.[2] This member discussed the organizational challenges her psychoanalytic institute had faced during the pandemic – which she described as a team-wide sense of powerlessness – and how, faced with those challenges, she chose to give her team the option of working more flexibly, which led to a renewed sense of agency and allowed the institute to flourish.
A member spoke of his weekly consultations with Ukrainian psychoanalysts, including one who had to move the laptop away from windows because there were bombs going off outside. This member described a sense of people “wanting to hide but also wanting to be seen,” people reluctant to provide a template onto which others might project associations (or more). He described a child injured by a bomb asking doctors “why is this happening to me? I was a good boy” – a question for which the doctors had no answer. This member ended his reflections by mentioning the “drive-by confessions” offered by the Marian Fathers of Divine Mercy, a Catholic fraternal order located on a hilltop in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The Marian Fathers, during COVID, had operated a confessional for people making the long drive up the hill and looping through the divinity grounds, and while this member was Jewish, he felt grateful for the effort to create, preserve and adapt spiritual institutions in the face of challenging times.
A psychoanalyst member spoke of the dysfunction and infighting she was seeing among administrators in her clinical hospital. It seemed to her to be about a change in leadership and a withdrawal from a communal setting and into the individual. She was spending more time with computers and less time with patients, who were then demanding more attention and more assistance from the staff. She noted it was “hard to be a holding container for treatment.”
Another psychoanalyst noted the intersection of political and psychological lines: “tragedy is geometric,” he said. Israeli trauma and Palestinian trauma, along with attendant annihilation anxieties, seemingly operating along separate lines but now intersecting violently. He noted a post-Covid longing for “a return to the patriarchy” as a holding vessel. A member offered his theory that the promises of liberal democracy were falling apart and, indeed, that liberalism and democracy were in conflict, that certain leaders were viewed as representative of “traitorous elites.”
After a break for lunch, the IDI was joined by Heinz Gärtner, a professor of political science at the University of Vienna and member of the Advisory Board at the Vienna-based International Institute for Peace (“IIP”). The IDI invited Dr. Gärtner to attend a session as part of the IDI’s ongoing dialogue with other institutions about potential partnership and shared learning. IDI members discussed the IDI methodology with Dr. Gärtner and compared it to the sort of projects and scholarship undertaken by the IIP. Like the IDI, the IIP does not commission projects itself but joins where its contributions are sought and helpful. Also like the IDI, IIP members can work together or on an ad hoc basis in undertaking interventions. Unlike the IDI, however, the IIP does not bring a psychoanalytic approach to its interventions, working instead through a political and at times academic approach. After an extended discussion of projects and methodologies, Dr. Gärtner welcomed a continuation of the dialogue. IDI members, especially those based in Vienna, will follow up with him to determine opportunities for cooperation.
After Dr. Gärtner’s visit, the IDI was able to connect with a Palestinian attorney and peace negotiator based in East Jerusalem – a longtime IDI member whose efforts to attend the Twentieth Meeting had been derailed by the Hamas attack and aftermath. This member spoke of conditions in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza generally, on precursors to the Hamas attack that may have been overlooked, and of the enormous religious significance of the contested Holy Sites to both Muslims and Jews.[3] There was discussion of whether the security of the Al-Aqsa Mosque feels, to Muslims (and acutely to Palestinians), like a “last stand.” If Palestinians lose the security of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they “have nothing left” – meaning both access to the third-holiest site of Islam and as custodians for the wider Muslim world. This member spoke of the outrage that Israelis feel in the aftermath of the Hamas attack and how that outrage shapes Israel’s response. This member also spoke of the diminishing status of the “status quo” governing the Temple Mount area and how that diminution feeds Palestinian (and Islamic) anxieties.
A non-Middle East-based member remarked about how prior to the Hamas attack, Israel had seemed, at least politically, “close to disintegrating.” He wondered how this reversal was perceived within the Palestinian world. A member noted that Palestinians had felt “abandoned” by the Arab world’s finding an interest-based relationship with Israel – through the Abraham Accords and similar political normalization. That interest-based normalization threatened to consign the Palestinians to history. The Hamas attack, to the extent it had a motive, was motivated by the need to remind the world that the Palestinians were there, this member posited, and to de-rail the process of Saudi-Israeli alliance.
IDI General Meeting: Day Two
Day Two of the Twentieth Meeting began with members reflecting on the conversations from Day One, the thoughts and emotions brought up by the IDI’s annual reunion, and dreams from the night before.
During Day Two, several members posited discrete interventions that IDI members might pursue, from scholarship and written submissions to group and sub-group interventions designed to create a particular kind of “transformative containment,” as one member described it.
The IDI turned to a brief discussion of the situation in Moscow, led by two longtime members who were attending the meeting by Zoom. These members discussed concerns and anxieties within Russia as the conflict with Ukraine continued. These members noted an initial surge of patriotism early in the conflict that had now dwindled to apathy. They expressed the sense that, while Russia was no longer safe, few other places were safe either. They expressed concern about war profiteering and corruption, facilitated by a “learned helplessness” prevalent within the civilian population. They noted the lack of public “grieving” within Russian media and culture, as grieving would acknowledge the costs of the war. Indeed, these members noted, in Russia the Ukraine campaign was not even described as a war. Quiet strikingly, Russian mothers, who had protested Russia’s war in Afghanistan, were silent now, even though the war in Ukraine had brought 10 times the number of casualties in 18 months as Russia had suffered in 10 years in Afghanistan.
After this discussion, the IDI devoted a significant portion of the morning session to a discussion of group goals, structures, and membership. Members presented on IDI finances, outreach, and projects, including a Global Dialogue Index and potential partnerships with academic and political institutions. The group discussed broadening its membership and decided that it would extend invitations to three new members to join the IDI.
In the afternoon, the IDI received a presentation from Professor Seyed Hossain Mousavion, Iran’s former nuclear negotiator and Ambassador to Germany – now a visiting research scholar at Princeton University, with whom IDI member Farrokh Negahdar has had a thirty-year relationship. Professor Mousavian noted that the U.S.-Iran dialogue was plagued by “four misses” – mistrust, misunderstanding, miscalculation and misperception. Members discussed a number of issues with Professor Mousavian, including the prospects for re-alignment if Democrats prevail in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, the future of the Jordan Valley, the negotiating position of Qatar and the status of the JCPOA. Members noted that Israel shares a long border with Lebanon, on which Hezbollah has positioned 350,000 missiles. Hamas has invited Hezbollah to intercede in the conflict with Israel, but to date Hezbollah has not done so. Why? Because Hezbollah (and Iran) are hoping for a Grand Bargain. An Iranian member noted the difference between Iranian pronouncements about Israel and Iranian actions.
One Iranian member spoke at length about the history of the regime and the dynamics of the current coalition. This member’s sense was that the regime is preserved by a society that is concerned about “what comes next?” The Iranian polity looks at Iraq and Syria and wants to manage any transition. 62% of Iranian university admissions are female. Iranian women are finding it easier to emancipate from unhappy marriages. The population as a whole is very young, aware of the shortcomings in Iran and eager to build on reforms. Given the age of Iranian leadership, the next few years may determine what model Iran follows. Iranian members of the IDI were cautiously optimistic that peaceful societal change was possible, although they noted that at present external players were supporting the radical forces. They refuted the idea that external sanctions would encourage an unstable regime to collapse – just the opposite, sanctions were completely counterproductive. Sanctions, they argued, are only effective before they are imposed. Iran has had the same leadership for 33 years, but lags behind in terms of economic development behind its neighbors?
In the afternoon of Day Two, the IDI brought this analytical framework to a private viewing of the award-winning documentary Nasrin (https://www.nasrinfilm.com), the powerful story of the human rights activist and lawyer Nasrin Soutoudeh. This private screening was enabled by IDI member Farrokh Negahdar.
Also in the afternoon of Day Two, the IDI formally transitioned from the presidency of Dr. Gerard Fromm to the co-presidency of Bijan Khajehpour and Dr. Donna Elmendorf. Dr. Fromm served as President of the IDI for more than 7 years, taking over from founder and President Emeritus Vamik Volkan to lead the IDI through significant expansion of its theories and applications. Under Dr. Fromm’s leadership, the IDI added new members, began a series of training workshops (with IDI Director of Training Regine Scholz), and began the Volkan Scholar program, which brought young practitioners to IDI meetings. Dr. Fromm oversaw the publication of the IDI’s first book, the launch of a series of IDI podcasts, and the launch of the IDI’s Speaker series. He guided IDI membership through political, professional, generational and gender shifts while not losing sight of the IDI’s central mission. He was a key participant in IDI interventions and public relations.
The IDI’s new co-Presidents, Bijan Khajehpour and Donna Elmendorf, bring professional backgrounds in business consulting and group psychoanalysis. Mr. Khajehpour, an Iranian national living in Vienna, offers his decades of experience in international business and his deep personal and professional networks throughout the Middle East, while Dr. Elmendorf, an American psychoanalyst and Director of the Therapeutic Communities program at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, offers her long experience and insights as a clinical psychologist working within a small, voluntary clinical psychiatric hospital. Lord John Alderdice and Dr. Robi Friedman continue as IDI Vice Presidents. David Fromm – Dr. Fromm’s son – takes over duties as IDI Secretary and Treasurer.
IDI members expressed gratitude toward Dr. Fromm for his long and steady stewardship of the organization and his facilitation of this seamless change in leadership.
Day Two concluded with a group dinner at the Israeli restaurant Neni am Wasser, a venue chosen in part out of solidarity with the IDI’s Jewish and Israeli members.
IDI General Meeting: Day Three
General Discussion
On Sunday the IDI gathered for a half-day session at which it reviewed the powerful emotions of the first two days and discussed plans for the future.
This session began with goodbyes for certain members whose travel plans necessitated early departures. Before these departures, one colleague remarked of the IDI, “we energize each other.” This sentiment was shared, and reflected on, around the room. We energize each other to engage and to view conflict through a potentially more constructive lens.
That energy notwithstanding, one Palestinian member spoke of Palestinians’ “total despair” and “deeply-felt desire for self-determination” and how those emotions felt both expressed and corrupted by Hamas’s brutality. Another member spoke of her despair at the torrent of disinformation flowing from (particularly) Russian and Indian sources. A Turkish member played for the group a political advertisement for the Turkish AKP Party that aired before the last national election, an advertisement heavy on historical and military imagery and one which blended Türkiye’s past with its present and future. “This was when I knew AKP would win,” she remarked. Other members expressed disbelief that what was (to them) such a transparently manipulative overture would be effective, illuminating the space between an appeal to a large group and the external observation of that appeal. This member discussed Turkish political dynamics and the economic sources propping those dynamics up, including the market for Turkish military equipment. She noted that Istanbul, with its population of 20 million citizens, 1/3 of whom are Kurdish, is the largest Kurdish city in the world. At the same time, restaurants serve less alcohol and have prayer sections.
The IDI then moved to a brief discussion of the rise of Chinese power, both hard and soft. As an organization primarily focused on the Middle East and Western European conflicts, the IDI has not historically had internal expertise – or individual representation – relating to China. China’s rise and influence, however, has meant that it is implicated within many of the conflict zones with which IDI does engage. The internal and international dynamics of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran, for example, now reflect growing Chinese influence and, to a degree, waning Western influence.
To round out the substantive briefings of the Twentieth Meeting, the IDI received a report on the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on Poland. One hears a great deal of Russian in the streets of Warsaw, a Polish member remarked. A huge number of Russians and Ukrainians have entered Poland and are having a challenging time assimilating. One IDI member works regularly with a group of Ukrainian therapists and remarked that so many of them “are paying attention to grief.” Forefront in their minds is the idea of “where our dead are.” This awareness struck the IDI as a profound contrast to the lack of (public) mourning on display within Russia. The IDI’s Polish member expressed her own feelings that she “had to stop” herself from thinking about how much she was losing. There was “no space for grief.”
An Iranian member posited that the way Europeans feel about Ukraine is similar to the way Iran and Muslims feel about Palestine. Another member noted that the threat felt from Russia was “real,” and not a fantasy of projection. Finland, he noted, wants to join NATO because of its perception of Russian designs (and capabilities). Proximity and geography change threats – and the identities that they shape – from abstract to defined.
The IDI then shifted toward the close of its Twentieth Meeting with individual reflections on the past three days – and on the past year. The absence of individual members, and the challenges to participation of several members attending remotely, was felt acutely. Members shared the pain, both personal and general, of immediate circumstances, the sense that hope and progress continued to face such significant setbacks and the sense that one’s personal ability to contribute toward positive change had its own limits. At the same time, members reflected on the nourishment they received from the group and from the continued commitment to task. To that end, members discussed a desire to move from theory to practice, to find places for intervention, to continue training work and academic outreach, to publishing and promoting IDI works. Two of IDI’s younger members – a Polish psychoanalyst and a Turkish-American professor – spoke of their “need to do” and their ideas for how to find additional sources of funding for IDI-related projects. Another member echoed that call and suggested additional specifics – to offer up to conflict partners the IDI’s potential to create a space within which to contain and reflect upon both “the moment” and the larger historical implications of the moment.
“We nourish each other.”
With this expression of gratitude as a guidepost in a dark time, the IDI concluded its Twentieth Meeting.
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NEXT IDI MEETING AND TRAINING WORKSHOPS:
The 21st Meeting of the IDI will take place on 18-20 October, 2024 in Vienna.
The IDI intends to continue broadening its training opportunities and offer semi-annual training workshops going forward. The next training workshop will be held in April 2024. Information on the IDI’s training activities, including future workshops, can be found at: www.internationaldialogueinitiative.com/training.
The IDI will also hold a mid-year on-line meeting tentatively scheduled for April and is exploring a possible sub-meeting in Istanbul in 2024.
[1] Dr. Wilson’s latest article for New Lines, published shortly after the IDI’s Twentieth Meeting, can be found here: https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-psychology-of-the-intractable-israel-palestine-conflict/
[2] All three opposition parties prevailed in the elections on Sunday, October 15.
[3] Attorney Husseini’s essay on the Israel-Hamas conflict, published by Geneva Solutions shortly after the Twentieth Meeting concluded, can be found here: https://genevasolutions.news/peace-humanitarian/war-will-lead-to-devastation-and-won-t-guarantee-israel-s-future-security