Ishani’s Experience
Last month around this time I was in Maynooth, a university town close to Dublin for 6th Group Analytic Society International Summer School. It was a 5-day event where we were parts of different groups of different sizes; group size varying between 8 members group to around 100 members. We also had different lectures where we tried to deconstruct our prejudices and beliefs through music, poetry, and conversations.
This was my first in person event in two years and one of my expectations which I took for granted was that I will be meeting people from across the globe and not just UK, Ireland, and EU as it’s an international event. However, it wasn’t a very inclusive group. It wasn’t a bad or a good thing, but it was a thing. The thing was, the reality that coming all the way to Ireland to attend a 5-day event was a privilege which the international community of group analyst/group psychotherapists didn’t have. Who was to blame for this? Or was blaming the only way to make sense of my disappointment? Still thinking about it
Through these 5 days there were various discussions on themes around diverse identities, prejudices and discrimination, aftermath of colonialism and of course inclusivity. And one of the thoughts I was left with was ‘inclusion is an illusion’.
I was unsettled and disturbed with this thought but the more I marinated in it, it made sense in a way that it can be the end goal but more than the end goal it’s the process, the journey, the sitting with it that matters. Because it’s painful and hard and shameful to sit with it.
It’s important that I speak out when I see a breach of inclusivity in all its forms, from gender to race to caste to class because either I can choose to give in to my sceptical cynical self of ‘What’s the point’ or I can choose to go through this journey of reaching the end goal.
I am still in the process of figuring out my place on public platforms and this write up is something personal but my professional is personal and my personal is political.
