“Belonging: Between Choice and an Inevitability"
The Israeli Institute of Group Analysis is presenting a series of study days for the forthcoming year with well known professionals.
Dr. Elliot Zeisel, Prof. Stephen Frosh, Dr. Farhad Dalal
The IIGA invites the professional community to participate in these study days, which explore the subject of belonging from different psychoanalytic angles.
The study days will take place in 2009-2010 at Hasharon Hotel, Herzelia
We shall host Dr. Elliot Zeisel, a faculty member and training analyst at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and the director of the Institute's Group Department. He is one of the founders of the Center for Group Studies
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Belonging: The Development of Emotional Skills
The study day will include the following presentations:
1. Foundation Concepts of Modern Group Analysis
2. The Development of the Interpersonal Ego
Presentations will be followed by demonstrations and simulation of group therapy implementing the concepts that were discussed. Clinical issues will be elaborated through open discussion with plenary participants.
Elliot M. Zeisel is a graduate of the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis and is a licensed psychoanalyst. He holds an M.S.W. from Yeshiva University and a Ph.D. from the Union Institute. Dr. Zeisel is a Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association and has served on the AGPA Board and the NRCGP Board. He is currently the Vice -Chair of the AGPA’s Foundation Board. Dr. Zeisel served on the Annual Meeting Committee as Co-Chair of Open Sessions. He is a founder of the Center for Group Studies. Dr. Zeisel is also a faculty member and training analyst at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and is Director of the Institute’s Group Department. He has lectured on various aspects of analytic group therapy both nationally and abroad. Dr. Zeisel maintains a private practice for individual and group treatment in New York City.
Dr. Zeisel lives with his family in New York City and the Berkshires Mountains where he is known as an avid cyclist and landscape painter.
presentation of theme of study day:
Belonging: Between Choice and Inevitability. Membership in the human family often means belonging along a continuum of positive or negative union with those we live and work with. This program will focus on the development of the emotional skills that are needed to form and maintain relationships. Learning to live in the moment, with knowledge of the feelings you’re experiencing about yourself and toward the person you’re interacting with, is crucial to interpersonal functioning. Through didactic and experiential process we will explore the development of the interpersonal ego in the group leader and in our patients. Working in this way will provide us with a picture of interpersonal experience and a window into the patient's and leader's intra-psychic process. We will explore use of various interventions in the resolution of resistance and examine methods for enhancing the leader's ability to craft interventions and use counter transference reactions to overcome obstacles in the therapist and in group member
2nd study day – 25.02.10
We shall host Dr. Farhad Dalal teacher , clinical supervisor and training group analyst for the Institute of Group Analysis London.
His work with organizations includes consulting, coaching & team building. In his psychotherapy practice he offers supervision as well as individual, couple and group psychotherapy. He published a number of key articles and books in the field of group analysis.
The Paradox of Belonging
The study day will include the following presentations:
1. The Manufacture of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ Creating Identities–intergenerational, religious, national, psychoanalytic,fundamentalist
2. From Destiny to Responsibility. The Struggle between Duty and Desire
Round table processing will be held throughout the day concluded by an open discussion with guest speaker the representatives of the table duscussion and plenary participants.
Dr. Farhad Dalal is a clinical supervisor and training group analyst for the Institute of Group Analysis, (London); he is an Associate Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire’s Business School in the Complexity and Organizational Change unit. He is a founder member of the South Devon Psychotherapy and Counselling Service. His professional identity has three strands: organizational work, psychotherapist and academic. His work with organizations includes consulting, coaching & team building. In his psychotherapy practice he offers supervision as well as individual, couple and group psychotherapy. He has published numerous papers on psychoanalysis, group analysis and racism, as well as two books. In his first book Taking the Group Seriously (1998 Jessica Kingsley) he argues against individualism and for the relational nature of human life. In his second book Race, Colour and the Processes of Racialization: New Perspectives from Group Analysis, Psychoanalysis and Sociology, (2002 Brunner-Routledge) he draws on diverse disciplines to form his understanding of some of the causes of the hatred of Others in general and racism in particular.
presentation of theme of study day:
In this day and age, the ‘West’ feels increasingly beleaguered by a pressing morass of Otherness – the Dark Ones, the Yellow Hordes, and most recently by the Islamic Host. At the same time old unties are being tested from ‘within’, by any number of alternative identities wanting to claim independence and autonomy from that which it has been a part of. How we to understand what are is going on? How free are we to decide where our allegiances ought to lie?
1. The Manufacture of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’.
Creating Identities – intergenerational, religious, national, psychoanalytic, fundamentalist…
Some believe that one is born with one’s identity, one’s essence, intact. Some believe that one knows where one belongs because it just feels right. This paper will argue against this line, to say that belongings are manufactured, conflictual and precarious. The fact that belongings are precarious gives rise to fundamentalisms of all kinds. The paper will show how identities are constituted by power relations, so that some are able to name themselves and others get named. The arguments will draw on the works of the group analyst S.H.Foulkes and the sociologist Norbert Elias to show how differences are created in order to be used in the differentiation processes, to construct an ‘us’ that is apparently distinct from a ‘them’. The paper will argue that others are not simply ‘found’ but ‘made’ through an othering process, and that these identities are sustained by the workings of the social unconscious.
2. From Destiny to Responsibility
The Struggle between Duty and Desire
Each individual is born into an established, but conflicted, social order. The result is that the ‘I’ is constituted by the ‘We’s’ one is born into. Individuals therefore, are always torn between the particular demands of, and duties to, multiple belongings. We are all somehow ‘caught’; this is true of the therapist as much as the patient. Meanwhile, each individual also has their own desires, which are often in conflict with one's sense of duty to something else. What are the sources of these desires and duties, and how is one to manage the tension between them? Therapy can be thought of as striving for freedom, freedom to create one’s own path through life rather than live out a pre ordained destiny. But how free are we to choose our allegiances, our destinies? How much real choice is possible? Is there a middle way between thinking of responsibility as residing 'in' an individual, which generates a blame culture, and of locating responsibility out there, in society or God, which generates a culture of apathy and entitlement? What place do these big questions have in psychotherapy? These are some of the issues that will be pursued in this paper.
Ethical violence: debates on recognition and otherness
We shall host Prof. Stephen Frosha psychology professor, Pro-Vice-Master, Head of the Department of Psychosocial Studies and Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of Londonand was vice dean of the Tebistock clinic. Prof. Stephen Frosh has published a large number of books and articles.
The study day will include the following presentations:
| 1. |
Recognizing Others - Prof. Stephen Frosh |
| 2. |
Being in two worlds – be an "Arabic – Hebrew" and "Hebrew – Arabic" poet at the same time
- Dr. Naim Areidi. |
| 3. |
For or Against Ethical Violence - Prof. Stephen Frosh |
| 4. |
Between Denial and Witnessing: thoughts about psychoanalysis and culture in the Israeli context - Dr. Chana Ullman |
Discussion will be held during the study day in medium groups for processing the issues at stake.– conducted by the institute group analysis members.
The day will end with a concluding panel of presenters and conductors. :
: "I, the "others", "us", and "them" :
Belonging: between a Choice and an Inevitability
1. Recognizing Others – Prof. Frosh
Psychotherapy’s concern with the quality of relationships makes it an important site for discussions of responsibility, mutuality and intersubjetivity. This raises many philosophical and psychosocial questions such as what it means to ‘take responsibility for’ the other; of how one acknowledges differences and similarities without either alienating others or colonising them; and of how one develops a stance towards knowing or being in relationship with an other who can be a disturbing yet longed-for neighbour. This talk discusses these questions in the context of theories of ‘recognition’ which suggest ways of relating to others as ‘subjects’ rather than ‘objects’. The notion is introduced that the deepest levels of communication may not be direct, but rather operate through an ‘elemental’ in which human subjects are immersed, and which they share. This allows an exploration of the ‘inhuman’ aspect of human aliveness that makes contact with others, and change, feasible.
2. For or Against Ethical Violence – Prof. Frosh
Psychotherapy tends to focus on the special relationship between two or more individuals who are singled out for care. Particularly with psychodynamic approaches, this can be thought of as a reflection of respect for what is being termed by some as the ‘opacity’ of the human subject –how each of us has an area of ‘invisibility’ within us, is ‘interrupted’ by something we can never fully know. Respecting the opacity of others is a way of acknowledging them: we see that others exist as subjects precisely because they remain separate and distinct, never fully knowable. Forcing others to give a full account of themselves is therefore, as Judith Butler says, a way of doing violence to them. This notion of ‘ethical violence’ has been one pivot for a debate about the primacy of relationality in human encounters, including psychotherapeutic ones. It highlights the question of love ‘versus’ justice: love singles out and makes special, and consequently is unjust; this may be the trajectory of much psychotherapy. Justice comes from a position outside intimate relationships, and does not differentiate between subjects in terms of their value; it therefore can be understood as a mode of violence.
3. Being in two worlds – Being an Arabic-Hebrew and Hebrew-Arabic poet
at the same time - Dr. Naim Areidi.
What is the intersection of cultures and different identities of a Druze Arab living in Israel – the Jewish state? Does belonging to different worlds dictate a man's identity and the character of his creation?
How does a man, living in two different worlds, sometimes in conflict and sometimes complete each other, overcome the political, cultural, social and religious points of view in which inside he exists. How he creates the most authentic Israeli voice.
Prof. Stephen Frosh is Pro-Vice-Master, Head of the Department of Psychosocial Studies and Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London. He was previously Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Vice Dean at the Tavistock Clinic, London. Stephen Frosh is the Birkbeck Programme Director for the MSc in Group Analysis offered with the London Institute of Group Analysis.
He is the author of many books and papers on psychosocial studies and on psychoanalysis, including Hate and the Jewish Science: Anti-Semitism, Nazism and Psychoanalysis (Palgrave, 2005), For and Against Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2006), After Words (Palgrave, 2002) and The Politics of Psychoanalysis (Palgrave, 1999). His latest book, Losing the Unconscious, should be published in 2010.
Dr. Naim Areidi, born in Mrar, son of the Druze people, is a writer, poet and bilingual translator - Arabic-hebrew, critic-researcher of Hebrew, Arab & Palestinian contemporary literature.
His songs were published in anthologies and magazines in more than 20 languages and five books in French, Spanish and English.
Taught in the Hebrew comparative literature in Haifa university, founded and manages the Arab children literature center in Israel in the Arab college for education in Haifa and in this institute published a number of children in Arabic – his own and as well as translations.
Dr. Areidi earned in 1991 an honor Dr. Degree from California University and in 2008 won the prime minister award for Hebrew writers.
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