Rezension zu Fed with Tears - Poisoned with Milk
Metapsychology bokk review
Rezension von Prof. Dr. E. James Lieberman
This small but powerful book relates the story and outcome of the
Group Relations Conferences (GIC) of German and Israeli
psychoanalysts and psychotherapists who met to confront issues
shared by descendants of both victims and perpetrators of the
Holocaust. There were four GICs, mostly in English, between 1994
and 2000.
The GIC structure follows the well-known Tavistock group relations
model, combining psychoanalytic ideas with systems theory. The
authors are supervising and training analysts, the first two from
Israel, the third from Germany. The book has many contributors,
including 16 of the 65 German and 6 of the 32 Israeli participants.
They express themselves vividly at different stages of the working
group in a »collage«. Those who contribute had in common a positive
experience, albeit with some criticism and disappointment. This
book is a collage, reporting experiences, ideas and feelings of
participants in a »collage«.
»This is my little victory over what happened there. Destruction
does not win in a place where people fight to find the human in the
other, and who can be more ›other‹ than Germans and Jews.« (Yoram
Hazan, p. 54.)
»... the Israeli members had a clear and strong sense of identity,
which gave them a vitality in communicating who they were, what
they were and their strong loyalty with their parents/grandparents
and families as victims which the Germans in the group lacked.
(Most) Germans seemed unable to find a narrative about who they
were, who their parents were, how they lived, felt, thought ... I
felt this acutely myself, and it is a typical feeling I have as a
German meeting others in the international community.« (Hella
Ehlers, p. 61).
In this group project there were, of course, differences within as
well as between groups. Unlike therapy, the group provided an
»other« who is not neutral, but »the actual counterpart of ones
suffering and pain and one’s burden of guilt and shame.« Working
through is not done »with« the other but »in the presence of the
other,« and in the here-and-now. (p. 176). A problematic part of
the German identity is that of guilty perpetrator; for the Israeli
it is that of outsider victim. In the process of identity
transformation those inherited burdens proved painfully hard to
give up. Therapists know that change means taking risks, e.g.,
better the devil you know ...
There is resistance to all learning that involves change, and that
very resistance may be a portal to the unconscious. Here the fear
of betrayal loomed large. Risking ties to clan or culture is
dangerous. The conferences open a path to constructive engagement
where sustained intergroup hostility blocks the way. Dialogue
cannot suffice and may trivialize the real conflict. In this
experiment the goal was not »talking things out,« but acting and
experiencing in the presence of the other.
Like strong medicine, this concentrated work is best taken in small
doses, making the collage more palatable. To their great credit the
organizers and staff met these challenges well: the groups
continued – with some changes of membership – and a vital
experience emerged, captured here in a publication probably unique
in group dynamics, applied psychoanalysis and Holocaust
studies.