Abstract
Ulla Häusler, Munich
Nine tutors and 34 trainees from Serbia, Greece, Israel, England, Germany and Finland spent four days divided into small groups, supervision groups, discussion groups, and a large group to explore ways to get in contact with each other, overcoming national and personal boundaries. It was such a multi-faceted learning process; it seems impossible for me to write a report on the Summer School Belgrade without involving my own emotions and considerations as well.
Is there a possibility of learning without giving up the security of one’s own personal borders? On a very practical level I was confronted with this question as I travelled to a city I hardly knew anything about, except for my memories from the news of its civil war and atrocities. However, from the very start the care and hospitality of the Serbian Group Analytic Institute created a climate which helped us to enter into this venture, to get in contact with each other despite our national and personal boundaries and to learn together. Not only was each participant picked up at the airport by a Serbian trainee, their hospitality provided complete culinary care and even went as far as the purchase of an electric fan to provide a good solution for two small groups competing for fresh air at almost 40 degrees.
Boundaries already began to show within the first group: old and young, women and men, the use of English as someone’s first or second language. At first encounter we ask about someone’s nationality or introduce each other as Serbian, English, Greek or Finnish. First contact is about national affiliations, but those boundaries between us also provide us with a subject, we can use to start communication. Quickly, we become conscious of the sensitivity the issue of national identity inherits. Which subjects are appropriate or even possible to discuss in a country which was troubled by civil war only 20 years ago and where peace was only achieved by national borders established between different ethnic groups?
How is it possible for a Jew and a German meet in a country where war and destruction is visible in so many places? How can we deal with the fact that GASI has initiated the International Summer School in a country whose national self-esteem and identity must be re-established? The task on hand is to overcome insecurity and develop confidence, to discover that in the end we all do have the same concerns. We approach each other cautiously and slowly to find a personal language, that may resonate in all of this.
When the Yugoslav civil war is carefully mentioned, I become aware of a common issue Serbs and Germans share. A thought I have never had before. Serbs had to change their nationality - Yugoslavia / Serbia. We Germans had to do the same - East and West Germany / Germany. In Yugoslavia new borders divided the country and its people, in Germany introducing the concept of Easterners and Westerners had the same effect despite the reunification. This suggests that people have difficulties, if they cannot define boundaries. But neither can we stand discrimination and exclusion nor are we able to do without the familiar, what makes us feel afraid and insecure. In subordinate clauses, the question is raised of how Serbia is perceived abroad - or Germany or Israel. In any other situation I was ever so aware that I have a national affiliation and how it can make me feel uncomfortable to be the only German in the different groups.
The first day of the seminar starts with a small group and very quickly the differences show: the five participants from Serbia are much younger, there are eight women and two men, and English is the native language for three participants. Within the small group, the work atmosphere becomes familiar and personal during the four days. Is it possible that this intimacy could happen just because time and place are clearly limited and because it liberates us to be in an unfamiliar place speaking a foreign language, when it comes to openly talk about ourselves? A young Serb mentions an important experience: we tell stories about our lives, and at the same time from the first moment in every movement and every utterance - of whatever kind – this history is contained and can be experienced by each member of the group. We talk about our private lives to give us an outline and an identity. But in every encounter we make an experience of ourselves. That happens automatically and there is nothing we could do about it as every gesture and every utterance will tell something about us more than words and stories.
In the large group anxieties to speak about national affiliations became more visible. Caught between fear of rejection and criticism, the ambivalence between the history of one’s own country and the inner necessity of national belonging and identity, it is not easy to participate at the beginning. Nevertheless most students became able to express themselves in the large group. The challenge to progress from the safety of being just a listener to participating in communication and therefore allowing oneself to become vulnerable had been resolved in favour of the latter. In one lecture we listened to what we had just learned for ourselves: in large groups the risk of inferiority, frustration and rivalry is increased. But to get involved also strengthens the ability to orient and engage oneself in daily life despite fear and uncertainty.
Then we have the experience that each small group is embedded in a larger social unit and boundaries can never be absolutely defined, because the same people are in both, the small groups and the large group. A conflict, that could not be held in one of the discussion groups, becomes the subject in the large group despite initial considerations that the group’s boundaries could be violated. In the group analytic sense, there is a consensus always to protect the boundaries of a group, but in this situation we find the need to manage these borders flexible in order to recognise the need for mutual speaking and reflecting, understanding and processing. We find it not easy to sustain and manage this conflict: our aim to solve the developed uncertainty according to our group analytic rules on the one hand, and the personal necessity to feel confident and safe in the large group on the other. We break the group analytic rule by not respecting the boundary between the discussion and large group, and at the same time we experience that the current large group becomes the safe place where we are able to hold our emotions and to reflect.
There are no easy solutions, but there is the possibility to maintain communication until an understanding of thoughts and reactions in the context of one’s own or national history begins to develop. In the four days of the Summer School we are living through the uncertainty of the initial contact, the secure feeling of belonging within the protected boundaries of a small group, conflicts in ourselves as members of different groups, conflicts between members of different groups - and the satisfying experience that we, as a group, were able to contain all of these facets.
I very much hope that GASI Summer School will become a permanent institution. The experience of these four days will always be an essential part of my group analytic training. Looking from Belgrade to Zurich the structures of my own training in Switzerland and SGAZ became more conscious. I learned a lot giving up the German-Swiss security and drove to Belgrade for the first Summer School. Learning is challenging because old ways of thinking have to be abandoned and new ways of thinking must be allowed to come from the outside. Learning disconcerts if our own boundaries are exceeded and get opened to different aspects. I was able to learn about myself with the help of the Belgrade Summer School group.