Lecture: International Group Analytic Community – Dream Scenario or Dream On?
Abstract
Despite our evolved capacity for love, the history of humankind has also been full of hate, conflict, warfare, atrocity and plunder particularly against ‘others’ who are typically experienced as different due to race, ethnicity, religion or nationality. I suggest in my presentation that we can expect to see representative eruptions and enactments of past and present international or inter-ethnic conflicts emerging when we bring strangers from different backgrounds, countries, races or ethnic groups together to congress and commune within unstructured groups.
Can the work of the founding father of Group Analysis help with this? Much has been written about Foulkes’s personal history of persecution, flight as a refugee and re-settlement. It has been suggested that perhaps because of this ordeal, he failed to adequately address the way hatred and aggression can emerge in groups, choosing instead to focus on more positive and affiliative processes. Also, it has been suggested that in his quest to safely assimilate into UK society, Foulkes missed an opportunity to contribute to an understanding of racism and xenophobia within groups. All of this may be accurate but to my mind he did, perhaps unconsciously, leave us with the beginnings of an important framework, the social unconscious, for understanding such complex and painful processes. It is fortunate that Foulkes’s initial work in this area has been further developed by Group Analytic authors such as Dalal, Hopper and Weinberg.
The main question I’d like to explore in this presentation is how, if at all, theory is applied to practice. In particular, is it possible to create the dream of an international group analytic community? Or is such a notion merely fanciful idealism? Most importantly, what are our responsibilities, given what is known about the social unconscious and the trauma synonymous with it?
Introduction
For those not familiar with the colloquial expression ‘dream on!’ it means something along the lines of; ‘you might as well keep on dreaming because it will never happen’. I ask whether the mission of Group Analytic Society International (GASi) is possible or not. This seems an important question to ask at a GASi summer school and it seems that when the question as to whether the organisation including its summer schools are really international or not refers to whether Black and Brown bodies, regardless of national origin actually, are included or even safe. My question has its origins in personal experience and so I also ask, if an international group analytic community is a realistic dream, then what responsibilities accompany it?
A further aim of the paper is to consider what we know of social, ethnic and racial trauma, and humankind’s capacity for hatred, conflict and cruelty. I begin the presentation with a reference to the work of the Irish Nobel prize winning poet Seamus Heaney. In ‘The Cure at Troy’ (1990) Heaney produced a verse adaptation of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, one of the myths relating to the Trojan War. In it is Heaney’s famous poem about the cruel, destructive nature of humankind and how we wound and injure one another creating cycles of violence. It is thought that Heaney wrote this poem with his native Northern Ireland in mind. It seems to me his descriptions are also relevant to groups within which our capacity for hatred, conflict, destructiveness and cruelty may be laid bare, especially within an international context. I also refer to the work of James Baldwin (1985) who said ‘..the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do’(P410). This reminds us that, in groups, there is a transgenerational perspective to the conflict and destructiveness that emerges. When there is international participation within groups, members can expect to be positioned in relation to re-enactments of many international conflicts from many generations.
When one considers the current and emergent social, racial and ethnic conflicts occurring in the world, it is evident that many are either enduring or actual and threatened resurgences of earlier conflicts which were thought to have been resolved. Examples include Northern Ireland, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Myanmar, Ukraine, the plight of Uighurs and Afghanistan. Recent Black Lives Matter protests testify to the international struggle for people of African descent to be regarded as full human beings some 500 years after Europeans industrialized the trafficking and enslavement of African people. Typically, ethnic and racial conflict lies subdued but not resolved in the social unconscious long after various forms of ‘cessation’ has been declared, only to be reignited at a later date which may be decades or even centuries after the original adversity.
Generational Transmission of Trauma
Trauma is transmitted from generation to generation via a number of mediums (Yehuda and Lehrner 2018). With regard to epigenetic alterations, Yehuda and Lehrner (2018) explain how research evidence is mounting in support of the idea that victims of major societal traumas pass on biological changes to their offspring. Subsequent generations may demonstrate trauma sequelae as though they had been personally exposed to the trauma, even when their parents (who had been exposed to major social traumas) do not demonstrate active symptoms. Volkan (2001, 2015) describes how survivors of ethnic traumas can unconsciously transmit deposits of that trauma into the developing psyches of their children. This can occur by parents’ unprocessed enactments of the trauma they have suffered or by the overwhelming nature of their trauma narratives. Menakem (2017), in referring specifically to racial trauma, describes a process of attempting to heal trauma by blowing it through someone else’s body in the form of violence and various other damaging and destructive relational processes, thus, passing on trauma sequelae from generation to generation.
Volkan (2001, 2020) reminds us that in the case of massive societal traumas, as well as those directly affected and their descendants, all people sharing a particular ethnic or national identity are disturbed, with ‘unconscious, societal or political processes’ (Volkan 2001, P87) activated as a result. As such, within large social groups there exists an un-mourned or unresolved psychological representation of a shared trauma in relation to loss, humiliation and defeat at the hands of another large group. Volkan (2001) refers to this as a ‘chosen trauma’ around which societies continue to identify, often persisting centuries after the original trauma occurred. If one generation cannot mourn the loss or resolve the trauma, it will be transmitted to the next generation. Through generations the unprocessed trauma lies as if dormant, unconscious and unprocessed within any given large social group in relation to the other, its former oppressors.
Because a chosen trauma is unprocessed, it is liable to become re-activated by a current threat, which creates ‘a time collapse’ (Volkan 2001, P89) whereby the feelings or affects associated with the centuries old trauma resurface ‘as though it happened yesterday’ (P89). Time collapse may result in irrational decisions by the leaders of the large group with members ready to engage in violence towards old (but now experienced as current) enemies. This process of resurrecting chosen traumas can be understood as underlying the intermittent flare ups around the world of ethnic conflicts thought to have been resolved generations previously (Volkan 2001, 2020). Chosen traumas common to Black people would include the history of enslavement and colonization by Europeans. As group analysts, I suggest it particularly behoves us to understand how transgenerational large group traumas manifest in our groups, especially large groups, and how to work creatively towards reparation. As Kent (2021), in her paper about the scapegoating of Black women in groups observes; ‘The wounds created by oppression, whether buried amid historical or ancestral trauma or openly bleeding with the rawness of re-traumatization, leave indelible stains upon our matrices’ (P364).
S.H Foulkes
While relatively little is known about the internal life of S.H. Foulkes, it is known that his personal history was tragically impacted by genocide, his sister having been murdered in the Holocaust. He left his native Germany in 1933 during the rise of Nazism and arrived in England as a refugee. It is known that Foulkes Anglicized his surname from Fuchs to Foulkes and it has been suggested that he was not known to speak in his mother tongue during his life in England. Bacha et al (2021) have suggested that Foulkes prioritized the need to assimilate into the host country and that this occurred at the detriment of making a contribution to an understanding of racial trauma and Xenophobia. Bledin (2004, 2022) clarifies how the motivation to assimilate may also be understood as a trauma response. In parallel, his personal encounter with atrocity has been associated with Foulkes’s subsequent emphasis on the affiliative and therapeutic aspects of groups somewhat at the expense of recognizing ubiquitous aggressive and conflictual aspects. Nitsun (1996) has written about this oversight and the fact the gap also meant group analysts were not provided with tools to harness any potential creativity that can be derived from aggression and conflict. Nitsun (1996) has considerably contributed to addressing the gap with his concept of the Anti-group. It is noted though that Foulkes did introduce the idea of the social unconscious as a group specific factor and it is possible that in so doing, he did leave a legacy that directly reflected his traumatic history (Bledin 2004).
Social Unconscious and Racial Trauma
I would like to highlight the relevance of the social unconscious in mediating expressions of current and transgenerational racial trauma and social and ethnic conflicts within international contexts, including GASi summer schools. It is possible to conceptualize this based upon what we now know about the social unconscious thanks to the scholarship of Group Analysts such as Dalal, Hopper and Weinberg. Below are some of the important points I’d like to emphasise:
- The unconscious is infused with social and political phenomena and what happens in society is brought into groups
- The social unconscious is racialized and carries our current and transgenerational histories of racial and ethnic conflicts and chosen traumas
- It mediates transgenerational and intergenerational repetitions of socially based traumas such as racism and xenophobia
- Past racial, ethnic or xenophobic traumas can be activated by events in the here and now which can erupt as though no time has passed since the original conflict or atrocity occurred
- Communication pertaining to social, racial and ethnic traumas is typically visceral, vagal and regressive with high risk of paranoid – schizoid functioning and malignant mirroring
- When a lot of racial, ethnic and xenophobic trauma is brought to the foundation matrix of a group, it will find expression through the eruption of a racist scene within a location of disturbance. This may involve an individual scapegoat, pair, sub-group or figuration which will represent the trauma for the wider membership
In regard to definitions of racial trauma, in 2021, the American Medical Association formally recognised the negative impact of racism and its role in escalating health inequalities amongst racial minorities. Comas – Diaz et al (2019) identified that racial trauma shares similarities with post-traumatic stress disorder but is unique in that the traumatic experience does not cease but rather exposure to race based traumatic stress is continuous in the lives of people of colour. Comas-Diaz et al (2019) found that in the USA, Black people are the population most exposed to racially traumatic events, suffering negative psychological and physiological consequences as a result. Carter and Pieterse (2020) specify criteria for race based traumatic stress in terms of racial events which are emotionally painful for the victim; which occur suddenly and are unexpected; and where the victim has no control over what happened to them. Similar to PTSD, features of race based traumatic stress include hypervigilance; intrusion of and re-experiencing, the traumatic event; avoidance and numbing.
Tying transgenerational large group racial trauma with present day events the Human Rights Council (2021) published an account of their review 190 deaths of unarmed black people at the hands of law enforcement agents around the world. It was established that these killings occur in countries with historical links to the trafficking and enslavement of Africans and to colonization; and where people of African descent have subsequently settled. It concluded that the killings can be understood in terms of transgenerational trauma and that they are a direct legacy by the dehumanization of Africans which was used to justify the atrocities of enslavement and colonization, noting that criminalization is a strand of dehumanization. Denial and dissociation by respective countries with regard to the links to past atrocities perpetuates this immense trauma and as such the global dehumanization of Africans forms part of an international social unconscious which can fatally emerge at any time.
The manifestation of the criminalized Black person in the European social unconscious is represented in Cornelius Eady’s (2001) work entitled Brutal Imagination, whereby he writes from the perspective of the imaginary Black man who was initially identified by Susan Smith, a white American woman, as the killer of her two children. Susan Smith killed her sons who were aged one and four by driving them into a river where they drowned, ostensibly so that she could enjoy a new relationship with a man who did not want the presence of children. Before she confessed, Susan Smith claimed that she had been car jacked by an unknown Black man who went on to perpetrate the murder of her children. This false accusation of a fictitious Black men led to a manhunt. In Eady’s poem entitled ‘My heart’, he describes how the imaginary Black male perpetrator is a construction of the white imagination or social unconscious, and is full of white projections and therefore capable of doing anything, no matter how appalling. In conclusion, the dehumanization of the Black man is a manifestation of white transgenerational inhumanity, itself based in racial trauma from the perspective of perpetrator.
Re-enactments of Racial Trauma within the UK Criminal Justice System
Nowhere is transgenerational racial trauma more evident than in mental health and criminal justice systems. Recent relevant evidence within the UK incudes:
- In 2020 two Metropolitan police officers took and circulated ‘selfies’ with the dead bodies of two murdered Black sisters completely reproducing the culture of sending postcards depicting the dead bodies of Black people who had been lynched
- Adultification and criminalization of Black children as seen in vast disproportionality regarding stop and search, use of Taser, strip searching and incarceration
- Disproportionately high incarceration rates of Black adults
- Enduring disproportionality within mental health services whereby Black people are subject to more compulsory detention, more admissions to secure services, more restraint, more frequent diagnoses of schizophrenia, higher doses of psychotropic medication and less access to psychological therapies
- Black clinical staff are more likely to be subject to repeated traumatic racial abuse on the front line of complex, high risk in-patient services
Group Racial and Ethnic Re-enactments
I’ve observed particular dynamics in regard to the re-enactment of racial and ethnic traumas in groups. Firstly, that they tend to occur consequent to huge attachment anxiety within the group including that which is brought about by recent community loss and trauma. An example of the former includes large numbers of strangers from different ethnic groups and backgrounds, such as in international summer schools. The violence towards and segregation of African and Asian students by Ukrainian officials at the beginning of the current war is a clear example of the latter phenomenon. Eruptions of racial or ethnic conflict are particularly likely to occur when there is a lot of unresolved, unspoken about historical trauma in the foundation matrix. As such, the ensuing re-enactment emerges as a racist scene, re-enacting historical social trauma(s). It is highly likely that the group will need to find a scapegoat to bear the pain of this. It is in this context that Black and Brown bodies become highly vulnerable to having the trauma of multiple generations of ethnic conflicts blown through them within the group. I have written about this previously in my articles about the white mirror (Aiyegbusi 2021a, 2021b) whereby I recognize the ubiquity of racial and ethnic trauma including how the scapegoated Black person so often ends up bearing racialized hurt alone. As Benjamin and Tucker (2021) observe, there is often a defensive moving away from considering these matters in groups whereby a retreat into notions personalised or individual phenomena is preferred.
Responsibilities
So, if the dream is of an international group analytic community, what are the responsibilities given what we know about the complexities around repetitions of ethnic and racial traumas and the ensuing risk to Black and Brown bodies? Is the plan to fully include an international membership or do Black and Brown bodies remain on the borders repeatedly taking the metaphorical rifle butt in the face as in Ukraine? I turn to some of the recently published articles by Black group analysts for guidance. Stevenson (2020) stresses the importance of group analysts being aware of their personal privilege and positionality to reduce the risk of retraumatizing those in marginalized positions. Kinouani (2020) emphasizes the interrogation of whiteness and its ongoing violence in relation to people of colour. Kent (2021) makes reference to the location of disturbance and her hope that groups can be helped to better understand and tolerate the phenomena they find so unbearable that it is projected onto the scapegoat to carry away. Nayak (2021) meanwhile identifies the future of group analysis as depending upon a decolonized framework, which seems difficult to disagree with. My final words about responsibilities are taken from my articles (Aiyegbusi 2021a and 2021b) whereby I stress the importance of group members engaging at the level of shared humanity. Given the history of dehumanization and inhumanity which becomes replicated in multi – ethnic groups, it feels safe to say that it can be assumed dehumanization and inhumanity will overshadow notions of engagement and the level of mutual humanity. This suggests a need for group conductors to be ready to address these risks and actively intervene. A paradigm which foregrounds an understanding of transgenerational social, racial and ethnic traumas would help with such a task.
The presentation was concluded with the most famous stanza of Heaney’s poem which stresses hope and reparation. It is hoped that taking seriously the phenomena I have presented in this paper may support a shift from re-traumatization to reparation and the possibility of engaging at the level of shared humanity.
References
Aiyegbusi, A, (2021a) The White Mirror: Face to Face with Racism in Group Analysis. Part 1 – Mainly Theory. Group Analysis. 54 (3) P402 – 420.
Aiyegbusi, A. (2021b) The White Mirror: Face to Face with Racism in Group Analysis. Part 2 – Mainly Practice. Group Analysis. 54 (3) P 421 – 436.
Bacha, C., Einhorn, S. & Lieberman, S. (2021) ‘If you Prick me, do I not Bleed?’ : Antisemitism, Racism and Group Analysis – Some Thoughts. Group Analysis. 54 (3) P 388 – 401.
Baldwin J (1985) ‘White Man’s Guilt.’ In: The Price of the Ticket . Collected Non Fiction 1948-1985. New York. St Martin’s Marek. pp 409 – 414.
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Bledin, K. (2021) Further Thoughts on “’If you Prick me do I not Bleed?” : Antisemitism, Racism and Group Analysis – Some Thoughts’. A Response to Bacha, Einhorn and Lieberman. Group Analysis. 54 (4) : 534-541.
Carter, R, T. & Pieterse, A, L (2020) Measuring the Effects of Racism. Guidelines for the Assessment and Treatment of Race-Based Traumatic Stress Injury. New York. Columbia.
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Human Rights Council (2021) A/HRC/47/53: Promotion and Protection of the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of African People against Excessive use of Force by Law Enforcement Officers. Report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
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Dr Anne Aiyegbusi is a group analyst, forensic psychotherapist and registered mental health nurse. After taking early retirement from an NHS director of nursing role, Anne now works part time as a Principal Psychotherapist and Group Analyst within the NHS. She is a director, consultant nurse and psychotherapist at Psychological Approaches CIC. Anne is a member of the Board of Trustees at the Institute of Group Analysis and is the member for anti-discrimination and intersectionality. Anne has presented papers at national and international psychotherapy conferences for many years. She has also published a number of peer reviewed articles, book chapters and co-edited and co-authored books. She is currently writing a book about forensic psychotherapy and racial trauma.