Group Analytic Contexts, Issue 77, September 2017

Newsletter – Autumn 2017 71
of belonging. It reminded me of the big celebrations, when in Greece
it is customary to participate in the extended family’s reunion. There
is often an embarrassment and a sort of anxiety that resides gradually
in these feasts. As I expressed my agony from the outset, the other
members of the group had the opportunity to console me, thus altering
at the same time the diffusible anguish of the room into something
concrete and specific. The structure of the chairs in our median group
initially formed three concentric circles, so that some of us could not
see some of the other members, hidden in their ‘secrets’, preoccupied
by the ambivalence of sharing and not sharing, questing and not
questing. A ‘body movement’ was produced in the group, as we all
turned in order to communicate better, leading to a psychic motion,
simultaneously friendly and hostile, fearful and hopeful. We
wondered if there is one of Biran’s ‘invisible refugees’ within us, or a
‘traveler’, or a ‘comfort seeker’. Perhaps we are all refugees in the
world, seekers of the calming reassurance of the uterus, out of which
we have been abruptly detached and thrown to the status of ‘infans’,
only to wander in life trying to be reunified, to find a shelter simulating
that of our archaic residence. Through this unexpected setting, a
feeling as if being in a small group, an ‘extended family’, was born
inside me. On the last day we discovered with astonishment that our
conductor Isaura Manso Neto had rearranged the chairs, thus creating
one single big circle. A feeling of emptiness, aggressiveness and
uncertainty flooded the room, indicating perhaps the difficulty to
change, at the last moment indeed. A sense of an unfinished blind bat’s
movement preoccupied me. And yet it was our last day. We worked
hard and willingly in order to conclude, an urging desire to reach a
fruitful point, nevertheless, my taste longed for an ingredient,
hopefully to be found in another future meeting.
The large group reminded me of the small village where I
started to work as a medical doctor, some years ago. It was a
traditional picturesque village spread along the mountain side and
surrounded by firs. It was often snowbound during the winter, without
electricity and running water, lacking the means of communication
with the external world. These conditions sculpted the character of the
village: hospitality and efficiency combined with cautious attitude
towards newcomers, people or ideas, gender or race, leadership
change, anxiety to build bridges in order to cross borders and meet the
different ‘other’. Integration was difficult, yet rewarding once
achieved.
The innovations introduced by the large group’s conductor
Gerhard Wilke, such as clapping and standing, created ambivalent