Rezension zu Fed with Tears - Poisoned with Milk
Metapsychology Online Review
Rezension von James Liebermann
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 working GICs, mostly in English, between
1994 and 2000. Since then there have been reports at meetings in
the United States and Germany, notably at the International
Psychoanalytic Congress in Berlin, 2007, which included three days
of experiential group events attended by hundreds. This book is
published in German and English editions.
The GIC structure follows the well-known Tavistock group relations
model, combining psychoanalytic ideas with systems theory. Desmond
Tutu, in his foreword, finds this approach similar to that of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which he chaired in South
Africa. Both »engage the irrational feelings that underpin
prejudice.« Written history, he points out, »cannot possibly convey
the full, three dimensional texture of these events...it is ones
willingness to be fully involved that carries the potential for
healing.«
The authors are supervising and training analysts, the first two
from Israel, the third from Germany. H.S. Erlich was president of
the Israel Psychoanalytic Society; H. Beland was president of the
German Psychoanalytic Association (DPV) which, with the German
Psychoanalytic Society (DPG), co-sponsored this book. M.
Erlich-Ginor is co-founder and past chair of OFEK, an Israeli
organization which conducts Authority and Leadership conferences on
the Tavistock model.
They, along with the late Eric J. Miller, director of Tavistock,
London, staffed the conferences. 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 defies the here-and-now spirit of these working groups.
The idea took hold some time after the first (1994) meeting. The
collage includes a few poems that brighten the sometimes heavy
text. Readers confronting this diverse collection, expressed at
various stages of the process, should not choose a particular
viewpoint but »reflect on the complexity of what an experience is:
how meaning is created out of raw material of information,
projections, past experiences, present state of mind, and so on.«
(M. Erlich-Ginor, p. 30). She goes on: »...reactions become
triggers that produce further reactions... Each contribution holds
multifarious meanings, according to the beholder and to the focus
at a given moment.«
»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.)
»This uncertainty is what can allow for a German psychoanalytic
identity-neither denying the parents’ guilt, or my own potential
involvement, not identifying with it.« (Thea Wittmann, p. 58).
»...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).
One participant, German and Jewish, was bothered by the absence of
»Jew« or »Jewish« in the program title; she decided not to attend
conferences after the first one. H.S. Erlich, who emigrated from
Germany to Palestine as a child, refers to a complicated Jewish
identity in Israelis, »having tried to disavow it in favor of a
newly born and liberated Israeli identity,« and the strain »akin to
madness« of being both in and out. (p. 68) Irene Melnick found »the
most powerful resistance came from my wish to keep my hatred alive
and my enemy focused, clear and unchanged. It was one of the ways
to remember the Holocaust and not to feel a traitor to my people
and my family.« She recognized in hating »a sense of power that I
found hard to renounce.« (p. 71). One German participant thought
the exchange was mostly superficial, and was »astonished at the
ignorance of the actual history on both sides.« (p. 74) Some German
and Israeli parents did not want to know what the conferences were
about: a German members parents declared, when she asked them for
the first time what they did during the War, that »they no longer
had a daughter.« (p. 75).
The GICs are structured by time constraints and the presence of
supportive, experienced staff. As in therapy sessions, within the
structure is a great deal of freedom, including opportunity for
surprises within and between participants. Conferences lasted a
week, two in Israel, the third in Germany, a fourth in Cyprus. »The
›other‹ in the conferences offers himself to be used so as to check
projections-persecutory, idealizing and others-and so to transform
them into relationships. It is this work, which happens on the
boundary between the inner world and outer reality, that
contributes to the power of the conference.« (p. 81).
The decision to participate was a major problem for many, some of
whom defied family, friends, and colleagues to join the
controversial experiment. Despite the inspiring foreword by
Archbishop Tutu, the organizers do not regard the GICs as a bridge
to »understanding, reconciliation and forgiveness.« The primary
task is »the exploration of fantasies, feelings, and experiences.«
(p. 179). 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 one’s 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. »Dialogue implies the
prior recognition of the other’s otherness and right to be what he
is« and may lead to denial of aggression and a »false and compliant
emotional stance.« (p. 181).
Like strong medicine, this concentrated work is best taken in small
doses, making the collage more palatable. Some problems: The names
of contributors accompany each segment or entry, but, with no
index, the reader cannot easily find entries of a given writer or a
particular theme. There are some repetitions, occasional flawed
English, and some typographical errors that could be corrected in a
future edition, which I hope will come.
The book condenses work extending through over a decade, in
different countries, with members at different levels in their
professions and their tenure in the GICs. 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.
This book includes no history of the Holocaust, for which a recent
anthology can be recommended. Voices & Views: A History of the
Holocaust, Deborah Dwork, ed., New York, 2002.
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