We are Refugees Too

How the arrival of refugees at Munich Central Station in late summer 2015 triggered latent individual and social tremors, which mirrored in a therapeutic group.

The social context

In August and September 2015 thousands of refugees mostly from Syria, Eritrea, Somalia and other countries arrived daily at Munich Central Station. On several weekends nearly ten thousands came by train. They mostly came through the so-called “Balkan route” which was closed months later, so for them Munich was the first major German city to arrive at. The refugees were given new clothes, food, toys for the kids, were registered by the police, stayed overnight in differend provisional camps in Munich and were finally distributed to trains going to other parts of Germany. It was a huge effort and organisational challenge governmental officials, police, helpers and volonteers had to face and to manage. People from Munich came by, brought clothes, food and money for helping. Lots of them had immigrated to Germany themselves many years ago and the majority were young people- but not only. Actually it was quite a cross-section of Munich population who came together at Central station at that time. There was an exciting stimulating atmosphere all around – wonderful sunshine and people clapping when refugees arrived.

In the media this Munich “Willkommenskultur” (welcome culture) was praised and of course we all were very proud of our city. Voices of a small minority of people displeased with this were hardly heard and registered in public debates. Anyhow in spite of this arousal anxieties and insecurities could be felt since terroristic attacks had happened in other European countries in the past and some days before a refugee – full of hate – had attacked an Asian family with a knife in a train north of Munich. With this altogether the social context impressed with a warm openness on the manifest level which hid latent fragility, anxieties and anger on the same time.

The therapeutic group

At that time, I conducted a weekly slow open psychoanalytic group with 7 members, 5 women and 2 men, who stayed in the group for about two years. The age mix was from 40 to 68. Clinical diagnoses ranged from narcissistic personality disorders (2), depression (3) to social phobia (2). The members held different professions: housewives (2), theologian (1), sound engineer (1), assistant in a lab (1), psychotherapists in training (1), craftswoman (1).         

Group session I (09-02-15)

At the weekend before, 2000 refugees had arrived at Munich Central Station. Mrs. L., the oldest member, starts the session: “What is annoying to me is what`s going on with these refugees….they are too many….why do we want to have them?…..they are lying…we have war here too ( a terrorist attack had happened just some days before on a train)…where they come from there isn`t any war….they should go back and should defend their country…now they will start building up everything with apartments…insurance will pay everything for them and that is why they will raise the fees for all of us…the state is being bought up by them…Yesterday I was swimming in a public swimming pool. And there was a Turkish father with his son. And the father was spitting in the water all the time. I found it so disgusting. I wanted to tell the pool attendant, but then the father left. …many politicians had to resign because they said the truth…this welcome culture, it is so euphoric…those who welcome the refugees are good, and the others are bad. You are the good Germans and I am the bad one…that is such showing off”.

Actually, Mrs. L. didn`t mention all of this in one moment but spread it throughout the session at different times. First the group reacted frustrated and aggressively listening to her arguments. Gradually some took up her critical points and discussed them but nobody agreed totally with her. Actually, her devaluations were verbalized and strongly criticised. A man (Mr. O.) said, that he went to the central station to have a look and that he has a bad conscience since he doesn`t do anything. So he decided to give money. A woman (Mrs. R.) mentioned her own anxiety to be spit on. Nobody of the group reacted to this. At the end one female member (Mrs. K.) confronts Mrs. L. saying, “you can`t get on with your life and now you are worrying, that it will get harder for you to get on with it when other people are here”.

During the whole session I felt completely paralysed because of my intense anger towards Mrs. L., but I didn’t know how to use it. How could she dare to say all this and here within my group? On one side I felt an urge to stop her at once – on the other I realized that this was not my job. As a group conductor I understood my function in watching the borders, which in her case meant to focus on her constant devaluations as she talked about the refugees using an anonymous term “them”, which reminded me of Nazi Germans talking about the Jews as “insects”. Additionally I corrected her arguments when they didn`t go along with the facts, so I offered statistics about insurance fees and planned buildings etc. Both didn`t change the atmosphere at all. Because of my helplessness in my countertransference I decided to listen to the group to see what they were doing with all this. Overall the group reacted, mainly devaluating her, although in the background few agreed with her arguments. The anger and anxiety triggered by the arriving refugees was being kept outside of the group – unbearable to hold it within – and Mrs. L. was left alone as a “bad German” between the “good Germans” as she had pointed out. Somehow she was the refugee who wasn`t welcomed in this group. I felt this and in trying to get her in again, I told her that perhaps she felt inferior in comparison to the “good Germans” and that she locates everything good with the others and everything bad within herself. And that one could have different opinions about the refugees, here in the group too. Mrs. L. agreed by saying with this she could get along.

With this last intervention I aimed to keep the group together, to prevent any split or scapegoating and to activate some holding function, since I experienced the words of Mrs. L. as an attack on the group’s cohesion which could end in splitting and ejections. The feelings Mrs. L. mentioned I viewed as quite existential, stemming from an early childhood relationship, like the wish to be seen (if not there will be narcissistic anger), to be fed, to be protected, primarily to belong to somebody. The corresponding anxieties I perceived as being persecuted, being abandoned, being overrun, being annihilated. Actually Mrs. L. had experienced all these affects in her early relationship with her mother, who had devalued and abandoned her extremely.

My understanding at this moment is that the group operated at three different levels: one was Mrs. L., being stuck in the paranoid position (Melanie Klein, 1946) and she was grappling with her wishes and anxieties rooted in the early conflict with her mother (= her personal matrix, S.H. Foulkes, 1964); second there was the present group struggle with these unbearable emotions of disgust, shame, envy  and anger which Mrs. L. as voice of the group took up and which moved the group to a state of splitting and paranoia (dynamic matrix, Foulkes 1964); and third the social topic of refugees in Munich and Germany (foundation matrix, Foulkes 1964), which touched on the unbearable German crime of the Holocaust and the heavy guilt and anger following it. Keeping up the “welcome culture” unanimously, without any opposition within this group would have meant to externalise the unbearable hate, guilt and shame and to project it on Mrs. L., on some right wing extremists or on the refugees. But to talk about all this here in the group? I felt that this could be quite important but on the other hand I felt completely stuck in my own ambivalent emotions and it took me quite a long time to understand and to move forward.

Group session II (09-09-15)

The refugee topic continued, Mrs. L. took it up again. The group followed her envious remarks on all the benefits the refugees are getting already, which in her opinion sharply contrasted with the average German who wouldn’t get these benefits that easily. “It is as if they are coming here and actually are steeling our time…I didn’t get anything, they get everything“. Another lady added, “the shouting of so many others isn’t being heard…and now the refugees are shouting and they are being heard at once. There’s shouting out of every corner. It is too much. Me in my agony. My shouts are not being heard”. Following their envy, group members started exploring their own painful feelings of being deprived and feeling ashamed. “Am I treated well, am I welcomed?” One lady remembered: “I always have the feeling of not being welcomed ever!” Consequently, they thought about their longing for and their fear of being seen. Mr. O., with experiences of being sexually abused by his mother, said: “Do I like myself? Do I want to show myself? I am extremely shy. My mother took everything over for me all the time”. Slowly, envious feelings of group members towards the refugees changed into some admiration for them, how they showed themselves in public and how they dared to do all this. Suddenly the refugees became a model for the group members. In identifying with them especially Mr. O. stopped Mrs. L. when she started complaining again: “they are so many”. He said: “For 80 inhabitants there is only one refugee coming. Just stand up, pull yourself together, be somebody, don’t take up this victim role at once, always”.

One could observe the group working on different levels: firstly, on the social level refering to the Germans to get away from their victim status and to confront themselves with the fact that they were perpetrators in Nazi time, with their suppressed hate and guilt (like Mrs. L., who was financially well off and lived in her own house), and  that Germans are offenders and victims today in the refugee situation again too. Secondly, the group worked on the interpersonal transference level, complaining about not being seen and perceived in their agony by me, the group mother, who was always caring for the newcomers but not for the old ones. And thirdly, the group worked on the intrapersonal level, where the envy was being worked through constructively.

On the other hand, in the same session some group members continued attacking Mrs. L. In listening to the contributions of group members around the topic of refugees one could feel the implicit massive latent aggressiveness. Unbearable feelings of envy and deprivation were being approached but should stay outside. One pregnant lady, who was much in need of help and support, criticized Mrs. L. as an offender. The male theologist did a long “furious” speech in favour of refugees, and his face turned visibly red because of his anger. Mrs. K., who was a group analyst in training, reacted with fury: “I fear the arising anxiety. I can’t bear anybody experiencing anxieties because of the refugees. I get so furious. There has to be an end to this debate”. She couldn`t imagine that getting closer to her repressed feelings of envy, anger and pain would help her finally and would remove her paralysis. At home she grew up with foster children her parents had often taken in, “there wasn`t much left”. Throughout the session I stayed puzzled, angry and overwhelmed in my countertransference, although I had the feeling that the group had started to work and was grappling with the split between “good” and “bad” Germans.

Group session III (09-15-15)

The two counterparts, Mrs. L. and the pregnant lady, didn`t show up and excused themselves. The young pregnant lady suffered from a “low circulatory disorder” and the eldest group member, Mrs. L., from massive headaches, “as if I would have been beaten up”. The rest of the group talked about their massive anxieties about failing and that they really would need the others for being mirrored, who simply weren’t here – I understood it as if the group needed some break for their wounds to heal – but at the same time the break didn’t bring any solution since we needed the other to fight, to understand and to reconcile.

Group session IV (09-23-15)

The two ladies came again and offences and devaluations continued…and vice versa. The interaction in the group was quite chaotic, humiliating, exposing and ridiculing. The manifest topic concentrated on the refugees but it was put aside by attacking each other and especially Mrs. L. – at the same time with desperate attempts by the group of getting in touch with her, which would mean to get in touch with one’s own feelings of hate, envy and guilt. There were moments when Mrs. L. became the scapegoat bearing all the impulses others didn’t want to have. The group was still struggling with a tendency to split and efforts to keep up some security and coheson. Mrs. L. was devaluing excessively again, “that they push them all to us…Merkel is a dictator…we live in a dictatorship”. On the transference level, I understood her comment as an expression of her hate towards her mother which now manifested itself in pointing to me as “dictator” Angela Merkel and that I, like her, would impose a dictatorship on the group. Actually this was a statement she took up from PEGIDA (weekly demonstrators against “islamization of Europe”) and thus refering to the fundamental matrix. The group reacted enraged and confronted Mrs. L. that she would not take up the arguments of other members and that she could not be empathetic with any other. Mr. O. said: “You are the hate queen. We don`t talk about ourselves anymore. You protect yourself behind walls. That is your unconscios strategy, you are heading for confrontation. It is not about the refugees at all…you are the hate queen and you like yourself being it. I know this from myself.” Another lady said: “I don`t know what is going on with me and where I am…I don’t dare to say it”.

At this moment I think lots of early anxieties were shaking the group and were shaking me too. Fakhry Davids, a British psychoanalyst, describes these early psychotic anxieties at the core of the building process of an identity between the “we” and “them” (Fakhry Davids, 2011). He points out that this is a cutting point between the social and the personal and that this is connected to the very early paranoid position (Klein 1946) where he sees the rising of internal racism as a mixture of social stereotyping and personal psychopathology. It is all connected with the new, the unknown, the stranger, who can be used as a deposit for our own unbearable feelings or whom one can approach with curiosity to get seduced for new perspectives and relationships (Davids 2011, Erdheim 1992). I think at that time Mrs. L., because of her negative experiences of being abandoned and devaluated by her mother, was only able to approach very few “new” people – refugees or group members – with curiosity and sympathy. Everybody got far too near – they should stay outside. On the other hand, the group didn’t want to get too near to anybody new either – neither to her nor to refugees. Both were strangers and triggered anxiety. I think that this reflected aspects of the dynamic matrix of the group and of the fundamental German matrix. After the session, somehow it was possible for me to reflect on my countertransference and to work it through. Suddenly I realized the immense amount of hate Mrs. L. felt towards her mother, which she had projected on to me. Thinking about this, I felt my own anxieties and feelings of guilt and anger connected with the German past. So slowly I could get hold of and understand my turmoiled aggressive and paralyzed countertransference.

Group session V (9-30-15)

The group criticized Mrs. L. about how she was talking about the refugees, “as if they would be insects….just how it was talked about the Jews” Mrs. L. answered later: “I am considering, if I want to stay in the group….because to me, Mrs. Bakhit, you too speak only in favor of the refugees”.  Mr. O. commented her statement later: „I think the same way as you do“…The group members talked about their fear, that there were far to many unknown people in Munich at the moment and about the crowding everywhere. Mrs. L. described the “train platforms, which are overcrowded so one fears to fall down”. She talked about her anxiety, that she could be excluded because of all the “good human beings”. I had difficulties to hold all this. Mrs. R. said that Mrs. L. could not empathize with other people and underpinning this she struck the back of her chair. I asked Mrs. L. if it could be that she feared being misunderstood and rejected by me and others and that this could be one reason why it was so difficult for her to empathize with others. And that she feared to be excluded from the group and then she couldn’t get anything anymore from the cake here in the group which is there for everybody and from which probably she wanted to eat too. And that this could be the reason why she perhaps prefered to leave the group to prevent all this. Mrs. L. answered: “Today there is another wind blowing from your direction”. I added later, that I think that the topic of the group is connected with the refugees on the manifest level but underneath it has a lot to do with very early feelings like fear, to lose somebody, to lose a holding relationship, to be abandoned and to feel shame, when somebody sticks out one’s  tongue to somebody else, and that there might be a connection with the feelings of anger and of being persecuted. At the end Mrs. R. said: “It is always like this…first we see L. as an offender, now this becomes blurred and somehow we all are offenders and victims.” I think with this she described correctly the changes which had taken place in this group on the individual and social level – the personal matrix, the dynamic matrix and the foundational matrix or the way from the outer world to the inner world.

Conclusion

I had different issues in mind writing this article. The main one was to highlight the connection between external reality and intrapsychic states of mind. With this term I refer to feelings and anxieties which are being made unconscious on a social and personal level. The daily arrival of thousands of refugees at Munich Central Station in September 2015 is a good example which demonstrates the processing of different and contradictory feelings which were released in various people experiencing the arrival of the refugees. The protected space in an analytic group turned out to be an appropriate place for group members to discuss their ambivalent feelings approaching their encounter with refugees, mainly their curiosity and affinity but also their envy, anxiety and anger towards them. In the sessions I present here, the members finally started to explore these feelings with one another and within themselves. The move to this kind of interaction was possible after I, as group conductor, had started to reflect on my own countertransference in-depth (Irma Brenman Pick, 1985).

References

Davids, M. F. (2011) Race and Internal Racism. A psychoanalytic approach to difference. London, Palgrave.

Erdheim, M. (1992) `Das Eigene und das Fremde`. In Psyche – Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und ihre Anwendungen. 8, 730 – 744.

Foulkes, S.H. (1964) Therapeutic Group Analysis. London, Karnac.

Klein, M. (1946) Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. In: Envy and gratitude and other works 1946-63. London. Hogarth Press.

Pick, I. B. (!985) `Working through in the countertransference`. In: International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 66, 157-166.

Dr.Dipl.Psych. Christiane Bakhit
Psychoanalytikerin (DPG/IPA) – Gruppenanalytikerin (D3G)
Lehranalytikerin/Supervisorin (DGPT, DPG, D3G)
bakhit@t-online.de