How is intimacy possible in a globalized world-and how does the loss of intimacy effect societies as well as individuals? This is the central question of the following article.It is argued that sociology alone cannot find any convincing answers, because we need to understand the unconscious dynamics of global developments that undermine the human capacity to bond and to experience intimacy. Group analysis offers quite a unique position 'on the edge', that allows us to observe and to connect, to analyse and to understand not only patients, but also people and situations outside of the clinical world. In this sense it is social group analysis that turns out to be a valid research method and an approach that is capable of deciphering the 'social unconscious'. An extensive case study out of a research project about transnational children in Ecuador (South America) and the story of Daqui are offered to show what is unconsciously at stake in a modern and globalized world, how much intimacy has degenerated already and how this can be understood in terms of group analysis.
Group analytic therapy, supervision, and counselling are completely unknown in Guatemala, Central America. But after a long and devastating war, an internationally supported peace and reconciliation process offered the opportunity to introduce new methods into mental health services, to cope with the psycho-social effects of a traumatized society. This article describes difficulties that were connected with the establishment of group analytic supervision training in Guatemala, focusing on aspects of trauma that emerged in supervisory case work.
I feel very honoured and am enormously pleased to have been invited to speak here at the 17th Symposium of the Group Analytic Society International in Berlin. It means a lot to me, to be able to speak here today, because Berlin is a very special place for me. It is here, in this town, that my Jewish grandfather met my Christian grandmother almost 100 years ago. They fell in love and about a year later my mother was born. 20 years later my Jewish grandfather was forced to leave Germany, together with his new family. Therefore, I never had a chance to get to know him. When I was 20, I myself left Germany to live in New Orleans, USA. I stayed there for five years and then returned to Germany. It cannot be denied, migration and refuge have always been an issue in my family and in my personal life, that is why I cannot talk about migration and refugees without emotions and without being moved. This can be sensed and felt also in the following explorations and thoughts about the emotional impact of mass migration.
In an experiential group-analytic group with women secretaries from various counselling services in the Frankfurt area, the typical secretarial working condition and the setting of the counselling service were reproduced and mirrored. Through the slow emergence of fears, anxieties and mutual mistrust in the group the members' hidden structural conflict became obvious and could in part be worked through.
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