Group-Analytic Contexts, Issue 76, June 2017

46 Group-Analytic Society International - Contexts
my experience of hurt and humiliation as a starting point to recognize
and explain patterns.
Here then are my experiences and insights as an antidiscrimination
trainer, although I cannot and do not want to leave my
personal experience entirely out of it. I do not know if there are such
things as announcements/descriptions in therapeutic settings. If so, in
my opinion, they should be written in such a way that people with
different experiences of discrimination not only feel addressed, but
also truly invited. For me, this would also mean that the group leader
is already reflective of his or her various social positions and makes
them transparent. When I announce my workshop on power-critical
educational work ("Train the Trainer") it always says: "Black adult
who has grown up in East Germany with an academic background.
Atheistic-spiritual, ableistic Cis-Hetera. Power-critical trainer, mother,
author…” This way people know in which respects I am privileged
(as an adult who is no longer negatively affected by adultism, but
rather, potentially, exerting it; as a cis-woman who fits with, supposed,
heteronormative ideas; as a person who is not a member of a religious
faith stigmatized in Germany), and when and where I speak and act
from a perspective of an experience of discrimination (as a person with
experiences of racism, as a woman who grew up in East Germany but
who is often passing 2 to be spared negative attributions towards "the
Ossis"; as a woman with experiences of sexism).
Especially in the areas of life where I do not have my own
experiences of discrimination it is not enough for me to simply know
and say this, but rather to educate myself regarding these matters. I
rarely do this on the basis of theoretical texts, but I am looking
explicitly for the testimony of peoples who have had these experiences.
In leading groups, it is important for me to be audible, clear and
comprehensible, where I can speak out of my own experience, and to
be quiet, careful, open-minded and learning, where I am privileged.
Also, very important: knowledge from experience is not negotiable,
not to be questioned, nor to be trivialized, but simply left standing and
accepted at best. If this is difficult for me or not to succeed, this is
neither due to the experiences of the other person, nor to the way in
which he or she presents or interprets them, but exclusively to me. My
2
Borrowing from the English term "to pass" - passing in this context
means to hide individual identities, not to show them, not to debate
them, but also not to live them (out).