Group Analytic Contexts, Issue 77, September 2017

60 Group-Analytic Society International - Contexts
AH, BERLIN!
By Derek Love
I offer some of my Berlin Sy experiences for Contexts’ readers to
compare and contrast their own, maybe.
Small group
The small group was the anchor to keep me grounded within all the
soaring energies of the Sy. Thanks Dorothea for your combination of
detached analysis that paid attention to the transference, alongside
tremendous warmth, involvement and personal revelation, you really
helped the group work, so wonderful to feel safe enough to put
yourself in someone else’s hands. It was so instructive to see you
working in such a different way from myself, something that you
acknowledged to someone else in the group, I felt immediately relaxed
enough to be myself (whoever that may be). We all got down to it in
a measured, engaged way. On the last day, I was struck by how there
were times there was a real flow and mutual understanding, a sense of
the multi-dimensional phenomenological perspectives that we were
all part of something, the whole greater than the parts, that is part of
our experience in working in and with groups, yet so hard to define
and put down in words. This is something addressed in a later session
– Writing the group – by David and Peter (I didn’t go), though even
having all the group members presenting their own phenomenological
perspective is still a net too coarse to capture the living reality.
Lectures
I only went to Farhad’s! I know I missed out because of the reports
but most nights I was last man standing at the bar, walking to CVJM ,
emailing from there, insomniac so not in bed till 2 most eves – I gave
myself a break.
Large Group
I love these experiences, don’t expect anything so am not disappointed,
I quite like the boredom but not the not hearing, they are, I think, overinvested.
I can speak when I want to, which was an important
discovery to make, but they aren’t where I expect much learning to
happen, though increasing tolerance to chaos is always useful.
Wednesday
How do group dynamics sound? Annagret’s music session was