Non–Tied-Up Reflections on the GASi Summer School 2025
As a group analyst who trains and teaches psychotherapy students in my home country, Austria — a small country — the possibilities for being a “normal” participant in analytical groups are quite limited. Hence, a time out in the UK, including the summer school. Let others be the wise and skilful conveners. Let’s meet people who have other issues than the part their grandfathers played in the Holocaust. And I found them: their ancestors caused or suffered from the Irish famine, colonialism, the Balkan wars. Having overcome some personal feelings of guilt in long-lasting analysis, my perspective on other possible guilts broadened considerably here.
Used as I am to “working” with dreams to foster conscious communication among group participants, the social dreaming group overwhelmed me; I couldn’t really grasp the melody behind the notes. In my own dream, however, my son was intending to set fire to his neighbour’s house. The “man in power” showed up clearly in the large group, obviously doing everything he could to attract and be available for transference phenomena related to the “old white male”—instructive for dealing with groups from my point of view (elderly, white, male).
It was in the sensitive small group (very international, with no UK participant present) that, related to my above-mentioned dream, it struck me that we had given our son a distinctly Old Testament name. This led me to associate my fear of Israel setting fire to Palestine.
I enjoyed meeting people during the tea breaks and the high-quality meals so much that I had to tell my superego to stop instructing me about “resistance to proper group work.” This was a transfer of insights into reality, and the realisation dawned on me that the whole world is one big analytical group.
In a subsequent session, I realised that we had given our sons Old Testament names to counterbalance an anti-Semitic grandfather. This led to intense positive feelings towards the German participants whom I had previously avoided (Nazis’ offspring).
More tea with Italian colleagues followed, along with the reconciliation of two internalised grandfathers—one Italian, one Austrian—who had tried to kill each other more than a hundred years ago. There followed a walk, including two not-tied-up bicycles, with a kindred spirit (not “spirit,” but a London woman), who allowed me to participate in the story of her Jewish parents’ escape from Vienna in the 1930s and who contained the story of my family. See her contribution in this journal.
Chats with Indian participants exposed Kipling’s place as a colonialist and led to looking at the full moon rising above the silhouette of the wonderful English venue of the Roffey Park Institute. The lectures, promising as they were, I skipped—except for one on the ethics of the Bhagavad Gita. I did so in order to digest the analytical insights I had gained so far, to revel in subject-to-subject memories, and, as is my long-standing habit, to sit or stroll in simple, evenly suspended attention.
The only disappointment I recall from this summer school was the absence of colleagues from Israel, with whom I had previously started a discussion about how to respond to a (right-wing) client who claims to be chosen by God. The only fear—regarding GASi—was that they might plan a subsequent summer school in Asia, cherishing the idea that this would be a non-colonialist gesture (rather than an imperialist waste of air miles contributing to global warming).
My wife suggested that I should not include this last paragraph in my contribution, as its contents are potentially offensive and could easily be misunderstood. I am doing so anyway, because the summer school taught me to trust in the group’s ability to contain and digest difficult thoughts and feelings.
Thanks to everyone I met there, and to my Austrian colleagues present. We agreed not to socialise during the meeting in order to detach ourselves from our roles as much as possible—mission accomplished.