Plenary
Thursday 16.6.2015 - 10:00-12:00
Creativity in Psychotherapy Training Institutes: Exchange, growth, impasse.
Dr. Morris Nitsun
Institute of Group Analysis, London.
I explore the process of creativity in its various forms, everyday creativity in terms of living an engaged life, creativity in our exchanges with one another and creativity in groups and organizations, with a specific focus on psychotherapy training institutes. I suggest that we have greater actual and potential creativity than we realize. In groups, for example, we are all the time co-creating. However, there are various obstacles that get in the way: where exchange leads to impasse rather than growth. In the psychotherapy institute, we may be bound by conformity to the legacy of the institute, its founders and history, and the anxiety about trauma and loss binds us together in repetitive cycles of enactment, limiting the courage to be creative. Creativity within the institute – that generates new and original work - is also hampered by tensions around leadership, rivalry and the ever-present axis of inclusion-exclusion. Additionally, there is the imposition of bureaucracy in the service of institutional survival that at the same time can stultify creativity. Is there a group analytic way of understanding these processes that might release greater creativity?
Dr. Morris Nitsun
Institute of Group Analysis, London.
I explore the process of creativity in its various forms, everyday creativity in terms of living an engaged life, creativity in our exchanges with one another and creativity in groups and organizations, with a specific focus on psychotherapy training institutes. I suggest that we have greater actual and potential creativity than we realize. In groups, for example, we are all the time co-creating. However, there are various obstacles that get in the way: where exchange leads to impasse rather than growth. In the psychotherapy institute, we may be bound by conformity to the legacy of the institute, its founders and history, and the anxiety about trauma and loss binds us together in repetitive cycles of enactment, limiting the courage to be creative. Creativity within the institute – that generates new and original work - is also hampered by tensions around leadership, rivalry and the ever-present axis of inclusion-exclusion. Additionally, there is the imposition of bureaucracy in the service of institutional survival that at the same time can stultify creativity. Is there a group analytic way of understanding these processes that might release greater creativity?
Friday, 17.6.2015 - 09:00-11:00:
What's in an EXchange? - Opera for everyday
Dr. Linde Wotton
Institute of Group Analysis, London
I am curious about what it is in the process of exchange that might lead to growth. Picasso said, 'Art is the lie that tells us the truth about life' and I see opera as the form that most nearly represents - makes audible - the order of complexity of the information that is exchanged in our groups, complete with its paradoxes, implicit knowledge and power structures. Exchange is a very broad concept, so I take as my guide three operas that I attended while writing this talk, in order to explore scenarios in which exchange does and does not lead to growth. The musical excerpts that illustrate the talk will allow us all to partake in these virtual groups. Drawing on the theory of communicative musicality, I suggest that the process through which change comes about, should be thought of as a much more bodily, non verbal one, than heretofore; one that takes place largely outside of awareness and in which the resulting change is only recognised and translated into words subsequently, if at all. And I ask what the conductor's role might be in a process whose virtue lies in the fact of it taking place exclusively amongst the group members.
What's in an EXchange? - Opera for everyday
Dr. Linde Wotton
Institute of Group Analysis, London
I am curious about what it is in the process of exchange that might lead to growth. Picasso said, 'Art is the lie that tells us the truth about life' and I see opera as the form that most nearly represents - makes audible - the order of complexity of the information that is exchanged in our groups, complete with its paradoxes, implicit knowledge and power structures. Exchange is a very broad concept, so I take as my guide three operas that I attended while writing this talk, in order to explore scenarios in which exchange does and does not lead to growth. The musical excerpts that illustrate the talk will allow us all to partake in these virtual groups. Drawing on the theory of communicative musicality, I suggest that the process through which change comes about, should be thought of as a much more bodily, non verbal one, than heretofore; one that takes place largely outside of awareness and in which the resulting change is only recognised and translated into words subsequently, if at all. And I ask what the conductor's role might be in a process whose virtue lies in the fact of it taking place exclusively amongst the group members.
Saturday, 18.6.2015 - 9:00-10:30:
The Transparent Refugee
Ms. Hanni Biran
Israeli Institute of Group Analysis.
We live in a world that is flooded with refugees, who stand out with their dark skin. They especially seek refuge in western countries with a Caucasian majority.
In Israel refugees try to make a living and move into the periphery and into weak neighborhoods. There are few ways to treat refugees, some of them cruel as imprisoning and deportation.
In my lecture I want to expose the transparent refugee. This is a name I gave to the hidden refugee that looks like one of US, with pale skin, a part of our people and state, but actually he is a refugee. His state of being a refugee derives from psychological reasons. He lives within us but at the same time he is a stranger and is being alienated.
I will bring a few examples from my analytic group in which some of the participants can’t find a job and are fighting to survive. They can’t provide for their families, sometimes even at a level of bread and butter. They are refugees within their society.
I will analyze the families’ background and the inner world that brings these people to the state of being transparent refugees. I will argue that they were already refugees in their families of origin.
I will bring examples from the group process. I will try to examine whether the group is contributing or not to overcoming this difficult life condition.
In the last two years I realized that such conditions strongly influence my countertransference. I realized that very easily and without much thought, I gave big reductions, compared to the price each participant has to pay, something I have never done before.
My counter transference was very much influenced by these transparent refugees. It seems to me that a state in which people with impressive abilities cannot realize their potential and feel helpless, is a situation that creates severe narcissist damage and causes the loss of one’s confidence in himself and his abilities.
These situations evoked in me memories of historical events that occurred in my family even before I was born, but were transferred to me in an emotional strength that rocked my world. Those occurrences are very much responsible to the lightness in which I reduced the fees to half the members of the group.
In the lecture I will try to explore how dynamic of exchange within the group's dialogue helps to cope with the painful situation of the transparent refugee.
The Transparent Refugee
Ms. Hanni Biran
Israeli Institute of Group Analysis.
We live in a world that is flooded with refugees, who stand out with their dark skin. They especially seek refuge in western countries with a Caucasian majority.
In Israel refugees try to make a living and move into the periphery and into weak neighborhoods. There are few ways to treat refugees, some of them cruel as imprisoning and deportation.
In my lecture I want to expose the transparent refugee. This is a name I gave to the hidden refugee that looks like one of US, with pale skin, a part of our people and state, but actually he is a refugee. His state of being a refugee derives from psychological reasons. He lives within us but at the same time he is a stranger and is being alienated.
I will bring a few examples from my analytic group in which some of the participants can’t find a job and are fighting to survive. They can’t provide for their families, sometimes even at a level of bread and butter. They are refugees within their society.
I will analyze the families’ background and the inner world that brings these people to the state of being transparent refugees. I will argue that they were already refugees in their families of origin.
I will bring examples from the group process. I will try to examine whether the group is contributing or not to overcoming this difficult life condition.
In the last two years I realized that such conditions strongly influence my countertransference. I realized that very easily and without much thought, I gave big reductions, compared to the price each participant has to pay, something I have never done before.
My counter transference was very much influenced by these transparent refugees. It seems to me that a state in which people with impressive abilities cannot realize their potential and feel helpless, is a situation that creates severe narcissist damage and causes the loss of one’s confidence in himself and his abilities.
These situations evoked in me memories of historical events that occurred in my family even before I was born, but were transferred to me in an emotional strength that rocked my world. Those occurrences are very much responsible to the lightness in which I reduced the fees to half the members of the group.
In the lecture I will try to explore how dynamic of exchange within the group's dialogue helps to cope with the painful situation of the transparent refugee.