The Seed and the Spores. Birth and Spread of Reflective Citizens in Italy

Reflective Citizens (RC) in Italy  RC countes nowadays in our country four branches and a group of about 20 hosts. Going through the Italian experience from its foundation in 2019 until now, we aim to identify the ways in which RC “spores” spread and the key ingredients for the training process of new hosts.

What is RC Koinonia?

The definition and description or RC Koinonia in the Italian flyer we use to invite citizens quotes: “RC Koinonia is a space open to diversity where we can as citizens and participants learn and practice the art of LISTENING, DIALOGUE and THINK together about issues related to contemporary social and climate changes that are taking place in the present and will impact the future of our communities, locally and globally. We have a responsibility as citizens to think about the present in order to build the future together without relying on communication based on slogans and propaganda.”

RC Koinonia is the outcome of a careful and competent meeting and articulation of sibling methodological and theoretical approaches:  in this confluence each group device feeds the following one in a smooth flow from the SD matrix to the RC Large Group shifting into the small leaderless groups and back to the RC Large Group. Starting with dreams and talking to dreams lowers exposure to anxiety, and yet provides access to an intimacy between people who do not know each other and structures a safe enough space (Mojovic, 2015) Quoting citizens: My wisdom is not the one  of dreams: those are one step ahead;  Starting an experience with dreams creates a common ground. . . A space free of judgement: I can’t be judged for my dreams!  The SDM lays the foundations for the flourishing of the art of dialogue and listening, as well as for voicing different points of view (Mulasso, 2022).

RC method is built on blocks of events since it triggers a process which benefits from continuity; continuity means to hold and take part in RC workshops twice or three times a year, as well as the possibility of spreading this experience to other communities, towns, regions, resulting in the building of a RC network.

Currently the RC is widespread in many countries: the Italian branch foundation was in 2019, by Alice Mulasso and Lorenzo La Scala. RC core values are embedded in the Serbian word zajednicarenje: gratuity, generosity, solidarity, cooperation, spending time together. Every workshop is free of charge; when a new branch is founded RC activists bring the ‘natural starter’, the matrix: participating in the first couple of workshops—Marina Mojovic, Zaven Djordjevic and Sanja Jokic traveled to Chieri in 2019 to bring the Serbian matrix.

The RC is transmittable by any interested and motivated citizen, no need to be a professional of the psychological field: when Chieri’s  Branch was founded Marina Mojovic and Alice Mulasso were the only group analysts in the staff—Lorenzo is a sports entrepreneur, Maria an illustrator and Gaia a medical student. A new branch can be founded by only one motivated citizen, trained through experience and following the method, since the method makes it move (Mulasso, 2022).

In 2020 RC in Itay had to stop because of the restrictions of COVID pandemia, though the enthusiasm to gather and to look for a way to meet didn’t stop. Dissemination happened after COVID: it was born from the incubation of Chieri: after the fourth edition of RC in Chieri, as soon as pandemic restrictions allowed, new branches began to spring up. New and old hosts often met in zoom, curious and eager to bring RC into their own communities. In this paper, we try to focus on two main points: What has motivated each one of us? How does personal motivation flow to the community? What we present is the process of dissemination through the words of the hosts, trying to trace a path, the path of the seed that from Belgrade arrived in Chieri and then Padua, Rivoli and Cinisi. We asked Italian hosts to write down how they encountered RC and what motivated them to bring it to their community and to become hosts. The path we traced follows the stories we collected.

The Founders in Chieri 

ALICE: I often wonder and muse over how we as professionals and citizens can contribute to develop a community  culture and relationships based on dialogue, respect, welcoming, caring for, thoughtful  attitudes, management of conflicts, using our competence and tools. It is an ethical issue to me. When I first read about RC on the GASi forum by one of her founders, namely Marina Mojovic, I was driven towards it from my inner wish to know more about this community intervention. So I traveled to the source, and there, in Belgrade first and in Kosovo later,  I saw it is possible.

LORENZO: RC in Chieri was founded on a beautiful, healthy, 40-year friendship with Alice. The key words are friendship, esteem , curiosity for the new and shared passion for groups even if in different areas and ways. Alice and I had been thinking about doing something together for years by sharing our experiences and skills: the opportunity came with the invitation-proposal to bring CR to Chieri. Personally I love challenges, proposals out of the ordinary; bringing RC to Chieri seemed to me a way to create pattern-breaking in a community (Chieri) that is somehow small-minded, mentally rigid and static in “old” and stagnant ways of thinking. What a better opportunity than RC, moreover the foundation was enriched with foreign people.

FRANCA: My Interest was applying group analysis, group relations, social dreaming, listening post, etc. in social work in order to facilitate communication and dialogue, in a more effective way, far from judgments and prejudices, encouraging openness to new thoughts.

GAIA: When I was 19 I went to London  with Alice and her daughter, my friend Maria, on four days full of adventures, museums, art and dialogues. In those days I was preparing a school project on a documentary by Thomas Torelli (2016), “Un altro mondo” (Another World). The documentary is about how everything is one, how we all emit a radiation, our thought, is a wave that if it meets waves with the same frequency can add up and become stronger and stronger. It is a theme that has stuck in my mind since that trip, and when Alice then started thinking about RC in Chieri and talking to me about it, it was natural for me to tune in to the same frequency, and I have to say that the summing effect was seen in a big way!

MARIA: How did I approach RC? In a certain way, RC came to me at home, and I have a particularly vivid memory of how I first heard about it: it was in the morning, I was in the car with my mom who was giving me a ride to the train station on my way to the university, it was on that leg that she shared with me her intention to bring to Italy an experience she had in Serbia, something called Reflective Citizen. What she was telling me was still a distant and nebulous idea, but full of life: it was a dream, a dream of someone who had experienced something so important that could not let it go. That was enough to convince me that it was worth it, in addition to the strong and wonderful theme of territoriality, of dialogue between citizens starting from the dream, I was impressed by the energy I saw in my mother telling me about this project, it was so true that I embraced it without hesitation and accepted the invitation to commit myself to help her realize it.

The Dissemination 

The term dissemination, refers to the operation of disseminating, that is, the natural dispersion of seeds, fruits, conidia, spores, etc., over an area.
Dissemination can be carried out by the plant with its own means or by various external agents.
The dissemination is, however, a natural process that allows the dispersion of seeds, facilitating the occupation of new territories, in search of more favorable environmental conditions. Sometimes, however, the wind is not enough, birds and insect are increasingly rare – and the seed need additional help to disseminate, as in the case of the RC .

In order for certain new plants -such as the CR seeds- can germinate, grow and live over time in unexpected areas, a network is needed that fecundates and sustains itself circularly. Fasolo (2010) describes it with the metaphor of the mycelium, that is, the vegetative parts with which “each fungus attaches itself to the roots of dozens of trees and plants, with which it continuously exchanges nutritional substances.” It is in this way that the network of RC branching filaments, once born in Italy thanks to the seeds brought from Belgrade by Alice, had reached Padua, Rivoli and Palermo: through a virtuous relational network that feeds circularly.

ILARIA: I heard Alice talking about RC together with Robi Friedman at the Group Analytic Lecturer we organized in Padua in 2019 titled “Beyond rejection, glory and the soldier’s matrix: the heart of my group analysis”. At that time there was a ferociuos election propaganda in my town, the tension was touchable . The citizens were on high alert about the possibility of opening a refugee center near my house, and many people I knew were garrisoning an area to prevent it from being used for this purpose. I was also cultivating hate and I felt my own aggression rising against the community I live in and the people I knew. I could not enter into a dialogue. I participated in the first RC in Chieri in 2020. Attending it  gave me hope that I could try to find a way to dialogue, primarily for myself. That’s why I decided to found the Padua branch, involving friends and colleagues, some had already heard about the RC and supported me with confidence.

MARCO: Alice invited me to the first RC in Italy, in Chieri. Those who had started the RC in Serbia were present at the foundation. For a long time I had felt that in my city there were many community meeting opportunities, but they were all addressed to a closed group of people sharing the same interests. There was a lack of a place for free and open discussion open to everybody. I felt the need for the mutual recognizing between people in the places of the city, from the market to the square, and I felt the fear of anomy, of the anonymity of the neighbor, in a climate, even a political one, in which “hearsay” is enough to “define.” I immediately caught the importance of bringing this way of gathering together to my city. For many months I tried to involve people I knew so that they would try the experience sometime in Chieri, and finally Barbara and I, with the help of Marina and Micol, founded the Rivoli branch in September in 2022. Throughout this time we were attending RC in Chieri and from the Chieri group we got support, with preparatory meetings and also in conducting in Rivoli.

NOEMI: I learned about CR online, in 2021, during the Group Analytic Lectures “ Trauma and the Social-Psychic Retreats,” which I attended as a group analyst trainer. Marina and Alice were the keynote speakers.  Engaged and curious about what I had heard and experienced, I then wrote an email to find out more. Alice, immediately responded and gave me an appointment to tell me about RC encouraging my desire to learn and get involved! Enthusiasm, welcome, relational warmth, desire to share worldview and thoughts. I was lately experiencing in my local reality bonds that seemed competitive, suffocating,  and distancing…. I was suffering from it, and hearing Marina talk about defensive and destructive “mental and psychosocial shelters” gave me the opportunity to give a name to the things I was experiencing, and also a new approach to build bridges between people and communities. Alice’s warm and enthusiastic response, did the rest: I was no longer used to such boost! Taking part of this project made me feel enriched, revitalized, connected with my collective building desires. And, ultimately, joyful at the idea of bringing this “vital network of dialogue” to my difficult land….

The key ingredients for the activation of a new branch of RC are imagination, relationship and enthusiasm. Local activists involve friends and colleagues in the organizing committee and, through the contagious enthusiasm that is released, mobilize energy and people into the project. RC’s spores soon reached Padua, Rivoli, and Palermo. From here a group of colleagues becomes active and gets in touch with hosts in Chieri to participate in the RC: the spore-activists begin to travel and look for a suitable habitat where they can grow and learn.

Conclusions

From the writings we collected, we were able to identify two main propulsive emotions that were at some point condensed into the birth of the new CR branches.

– The first emotional focus that emerged relates to a lack: a lack of a place of free and open discussion for all, difficulty in entering into dialogue, fear of closure, and a rarity of constructive dialogue and of social relations, loneliness. With these words, the hosts motivate the spark that led them to feel interest and curiosity about RC. The host writings refer to the social changes experienced with a strong sense of lack,  emptiness and traumatic disorientation.

– The second emotional focus that emerged is concerning the desire: desire to engage people and communities in something group-based that supports the creation of networks and relationships; desire for change, for a new way of being together, for a new way of building bridges between people; desire to recreate community, for a lively network of dialogue; need for authentic contact with the Other; need for divergent thinking and constructive confrontation and openness; desire for encounter; need to break old unsatisfying patterns to make room for the new; desire for social intervention; desire for “Another World” and to tune in to new frequencies of thought.

As can be seen from these recurring themes, the hosts expressed desire and hope for the return of dialogue, understood in its etymological sense of “encounter through speech,” emphasizing the possibility that the RC represents a place where the search for the common good can be realized.

In fact, while it is true that the discussions in our hosts’ group often referred to those psychosocial traumas that had brought to apply RC in Serbia as a method to take care of the community, it is also true that reflecting together, we became curious about the evidence that the word “trauma” contained several meanings: not only references related to wounding, pain, lack, but at the same time also the possibility of “scrubbing them away” and providing a gateway through them: trauma is the element of fracture that breaks the existent; thus, it contains in nice the possibility of opening to the new.

From this point of view, the failures and wounds may not remain individual, narcissistic, and destructive, may not affect the possibility of experiencing the new also meant as the Other or new groups-despite the fact that the current social world, as we said, is potentially traumatogenous. This point of view is one through which it is possible to think, as Marina said when speaking of RC (and quoting L. Cohen) that “Everything has a crack in it; that’s how the light gets in.”

References

Fasolo F. (2010) (a cura della sede di Catania del LdG)  Foulkes, la comunità, la cura.  Tipolitografia A&G, Catania

Friedman R. (2018) Beyond rejection, glory and the soldier’s matrix: the heart of my group analysis. Group Analysis, 51(4): 389- 405.

Mojović M. (2015). The Matrix Disrupted. Challenges and Changes. Group Analysis, 48(4): 540- 556.

Mojović, M. (2021).Trauma and the Social-Psychic Retreats – Facing and transforming them in the Group Analytic Groups – Clinical and Applied. Paper presented at COIRAG, Group Analytic Lectures, Torino, 19, 20 february 2021.

Mulasso A. (2022). Reflective citizens koinonia matrix in movement. Group Analysis, 55(4): 516–522.

Torelli T. (2016) Un altro mondo. Feltrinelli