DUALITY AND DEVELOPMENT
Report on the 6th International Meeting of Systems in Transition
June 19-22 1997 in Budmerice, Slovakia:
WOMEN & MEN, NOW & (W)HERE Systems in Transition is a network of mental-health professionals and social scientists from 19 countries who have been meeting annually since 1992 to work cooperatively on understanding psychosocial dimensions of transitional processes in our societies. After the 5th meeting in Budapest in 1995, Power and Leadership in Transition, we had been unable to make concrete further plans, so we had elected an International Board to structure our own undefined future. In this situation, we were very happy when Dagmar Kop?anovä, together with other colleagues and members in Bratislava, had the spontaneous idea to organize the 6th International Meeting in Slovakia.
When we got together to plan the meeting, we decided on the topic Women & Men, Now &(W)Here for
a number of reasons. It is concrete and theoretical, linking family and society. The changes in society are reflected in details and outlines of the way men and women get along. Focussing on a polarity between Women and Men would be a nice counterpoint to the East-West topics which had been explicit in our work of the first few years.
(Counterpoint or parallel .... ?) Women and men like to get together, as we do, too. Also, there is already a great deal of literature on this topic, largely a discussion between Eastern and Western feminists (including the question of what feminism is and can be). What we did not realize at the time we chose the topic is that it mirrored the duality of our own working structure, with the Board and the Local Organizing Committee. This was to be revealed to us in the course of the meeting.
First, though, there was a lot of work which was done with great energy. An earlier suggestion of meeting in the country was taken up with the Dagmar, Attila & Jancis choice of Budmerice, a beautiful small town north of Bratislava in the foot-hills of the Carpathians with a comfortable conference center in a big old house where we could all live together. Invitations were sent to all previous members and many new people. Then we found out that Soros was unwilling to contribute to the financing of this meeting. We almost gave up, but the Board decided to gather even more private financing and the participants found cheap trains and buses (which meant that some from Moscow were en route for up to a week in each direction). Amid a flurry of last-minute communications, cancellations, successes and minor catastrophes, we gathered for what turned out to be our largest meeting ever with an extraordinarily diverse group of 40 people ranging in age from 16 to 60 and in profession from students to professors with many practicing professionals.
We represented 17 countries: Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, Rumania, Slovakia, Russia, Britain, Bosnia, Portugal, Croatia, the U.S.A. and Yugoslavia, as before with new participants from the Czech Republic, Macedonia (FYRoM), as well as Israel, Latvia, and Italy.
After thanking the organizations in Bratislava which had helped us practically, especially the Research Institute on Child Psychology and Pathopsychology (VUDPaP)and the Academy of Education (Akademia Vzdelavania), we had a workshop led by Attila Grünczeisz from Budapest, our Central Coordinator. He designated 'Territories' in the room in which we were to gather: Paradise, The Land of Men, the Land of Women, the Land of Relationships, and The Land of Those Who Don't Play by the Rules. Our job was to find out what we had in common in each territory. This lead us into important discussions with people we hadn't known before, and opened the group process as Those Who Don't Play by the Rules refused to rejoin the Plenum. We all had a good time.
Those Who Don't Play by the Rules
Although there was some lack of agreement in our group as to whether the situation of women really is categorically different in 'the East' (for instance, many found the Northeast more 'Western' and the Southwest more 'Eastern'), our first speaker on the second day, Zora Butorova, did describe a situation in Slovakia where gender problems seemed less important than for instance economic aspects of transition, an impression shared by many participants. Most people seemed to find it normal for men to have more advantages, while the idea of 'feminism' seemed to most people to imply militance and man-hating (almost like a dirty word). She mentioned that the feminist peace-movement in Zagreb had been put down as 'witches' and 'national enemies.'
One participant who has lived in the East and the West said it was particularly difficult to find out the essence of feminism in Eastern and Central European countries. A British member who had participated in the rise of the Woman's Movement during the 70's and 80's in the U.S. was "struck by how much less strident, vocally angry, or apparently confident of their rights and wrongs today's central and east european women are. On the one hand I think this has to do with eastern women having not yet found their voice in working out what they believe and where they stand in regard to the construction and role of gender in their lives or the true equality of the sexes. On the other hand I found myself hoping that this new women's movement of the late 90's could achieve its ends with less militancy and disparagement of men." A colleague from Slovakia summed it up similarly: "Looks like the women in the East are more benevolent to some sexual harassment attempts of men as contrary to the women in the West. Maybe this phenomenon is also the outcome of more developed democracy in the West as here women are non-compromising." A young woman from Russia wrote: "About the West and East and the directions of their development, it looks as opposite in some ways. It was very interesting to learn that men who carry their babies are the 'new Americans.' The main characteristic of the 'new Russians' not less than the 'new Ukrainians' is that they are driving lines between public and private as the line between man's sphere and woman's sphere."
Concrete aspects of these issues were discussed by Jan Koznar from Prague, who trains men there to avoid being sexually harassing and with the police to help them deal with women who have been exposed to sexual crimes. Here, too, the same discussions were implicit: "In Romania," as one participant said, "this matter is not of interest." As it turned out, this issue is about wider questions of boundaries and power. It leads to the important question of what kind of communication skills Jan Koznar/Zora Butorova are needed for inter-gender understanding. What do we have in common and what differentiates us? What is our internal differentiation of 'we' groups?
An important feature of the approach of our organizers from the beginning had been to invite men specifically, make them feel welcome, etc. (Was this perhaps an 'Eastern' approach?) Although in the end we had only 13 men and 27 women, this ratio is relatively good for our field and those men who were there took an active part in leading workshops and partici-pating in discussions. Alexander Shapiro from Moscow, for instance, had the women sit on one side, the men on the other, and then asked 'What's good about being a man?' 'What's bad about it?' This was particularly moving when his own 16-year-old son reflected on having to join the army.
Other presentations focussed on what boys and girls think of each other - boys looking for understanding and girls for affection - (Georgeta Stegarescu + Juliana Stilar, Rumania); how to build a relationship with the other sex (a cours that Elka Petkova has developed for schools in Bulgaria), what kind of women alcoholics are married to (Pande Vidinovski, Macedonia) and the dynamics of disintegration in enmeshed families (Elena Grozdanova + Branka Dadasovic, Macedonia). An interesting set of presentations were Ioulia Gradskova's on the understanding of Liberalism as 'anything goes' in Moscow, with many repercussions on the life-style of couples, and Shlomo Sharlin's reflections on Russian migrants to Israel, who reflect a much more conservative view of family organisation than the surrounding population there.
As the reader will notice, we had many fascinating presentations, of which these are only examples! But how to talk about them? The program was so full that we had no chance to exchange views either with the authors or with each other. The more we were offered, the less we could do with it. As we struggled with this paradox - first unconsciously, then unwillingly, rebelliously, and at last constructively, we discovered that there were two organizational principles at work, a more formalized way of giving content and a more interactional way of sharing process. The sense of conflict between these two principles had been unintentionally exacerbated by a workshop presented by Tom Pick, which had divided us into active Alphas and passive Betas. We called an extra meeting for the evening, and the German participants re-arranged the room so that we could all see each other as we spoke in one large circle.
Gradually, we moved into a discussion of our own process. Then one of our SLovakian organizers posed the question of how we had fallen in love the first time, which brought us back to our topic and to the spirit of direct exchange which is more typical for our work.
Next morning, we had our choice of workshops or papers. Olga Marlinovä lead a group discussion of our own experience with the other sex, while Attila Grünczeisz asked for silence and nonverbal interaction in his workshop "Leaving Paradise."
Leaving Paradise WorkshopPapers in the Garden
One of the papers at the session in the- garden was Melita Richter Malabotta's moving account of the marginalization of women as a result of the war in Croatia. Aside from the downright brutalizations of war, including rape, murder, and physical destruction of families, there seems to be a long-term solidification of old role divisions in crisis periods. Our Bosnian participants shared this view, adding that men's greatest problems today are those of the veterans.
In the afternoon, there was free time as well as the opportunity to visit Budmerice and two near-by castles. Once again, we found ourselves in 2 groups with 2 organisational principles. One might be called more disciplined (or 'authoritarian') and one more relaxed (or 'inner- directed'). This crystallization of 2 distinct (and opposite)principles seems to be an important first step in the development of complexity - and it seems to mirror the dichotomy of the 2 genders we were talking about. In point of fact, however, we were not having these differences between men and women. Sometimes it seemed that the more 'disciplined' approach was more 'Eastern' - but in this case, the 2 leaders were both Slovakian women. Maybe it corresponded most with the length of experience in our network.
At the party that evening, however, everything came together. Wo had the great good fortune of being in the countryside as midsummer coincided with the full moon, and at our party the principle of energetic giving coincided very well with the principle of interaction. After grilling sausages and enjoying the wonderful wine from Modra, we all sang songs from our countries and got the Macedonians to teach us their dance. Some played the piano, everyone found chances to talk about whatever had been left out, and we danced until we dropped!
On the last morning, we met together to try to grasp the meaning of our experience. While we were still hesitant about articulating the tensions that had developed, the group was clearly energized. Whatever might have been difficult in our three days together turned into constructive suggestions for the future. Many of us found our topic even more interesting now than we had at the beginning, so a task-force was founded to continue working on it. Other groups decided to delve into the topics of Psychology in Transition and Families in Transition. We received invitations to Macedonia for 1999 and Sarajevo for 2000 which, with a short brainstorming session, brought us to the three-year focus on Overcoming Violence which wo want to open in Düsseldorf in May 1998. That will be described in the future.
As far as this year's meeting is concerned, the most interesting part seems to be that by opening to a polarity in our own process, we have surprisingly stimulated the development of the group as a whole. It would be wrong to say that this polarity was welcome or that opening to it was always easy. We were upset by the very fact that we could have such important differences of opinion. Our communication was blocked with each other for reasons that we even now don't understand completely. The family therapists among us were embarrassed to have unarticulated differences among the leadership, for fear of triangularizing the participants. As it turns out, however, these very difficulties have unlocked the strength of the group as a whole and of the individual participants.
This result has a number of implications. At the most general level, it reaffirms the value of having 2 parents in a family - even if they disagree and find themselves unable to be the kind of parents they had wanted to be. Maybe a single-parent is more like the kind of monolithic structure we had had at earlier meetings, which seemed to stimulate rebellion (experienced as East-West conflict). The very bi-polarity of this year's structure seems to have stimulated development.
Openness is important to us as therapists, too - particularly when it is difficult. As a person from the East said, "We used to hide many things, and never had any experience in how to solve conflicts. So we learned to hide things behind a barrier, to protect us from future suffering." As she gained confidence in dealing with such situations, however, she added that "Problems are like clouds; you can't see what's behind them."
This was our experience with WOMEN & MEN, NOW and in BUDMERICE, and our resolution of that experience through a process of correspondence and further discussion in the months afterward. It was based on the experience we have of Systems in Transition as a 'family-like setting were everybody can safely open his heart and trust to his family member.' As Jancis Long wrote: "SIT is a wonderful open structure with great potential for continuing to be a place where we can learn from each other about our common problems and solutions in the fields of families, therapy, and transition along many dimensions."
Written by Susan Scharwiess and Dagmar Kop?anovä on the basis of written reports by 22 participants.
 
PARTICIPANTS AT THE BUDMERICE MEETING, 1997
Lászlö Bánszegi Budapest, Hungary
Beatrix Baranicová Presov, Slovakia
Zora Butorová Bratislava, Slovakia
Branka Dadasovic Skopje, Macedonia
Barbara Eckey Berlin, Germany
Branko Gacic Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Ioulia Gradskova Moscow, Russia
Elena Grozdanova Skopje, Macedonia
Attila Grünczeisz Budapest, Hungary
Juliana Hristova Stip, Macedonia
Kamela Jevdevic Sarajevo, Bonia Herzegovina
Vera Kattermann Berlin, Germany
Dagmar Kopcanovä Bratislava, Slovakia
Jan Koznar Prague, Czech Republic
Jancis Long Budapest, Hungary (UK)
Zdenka Mackovä Bratislava, Slovakia
Melita Richter Malabotta Trieste, Italy (Croatia)
Olga Marlinovä Prague, Czech Republic (US)
Eduardo Pereira Marques Lisbon, Portugal
Gabi Menzhausen Berlin, Germany
Magda Papankovä Bratislava, Slovakia
Elka Petkova Sofia, Bulgaria
Andrea Petrits Budapest, Hungary
Thomas Pick Budapest, Hungary (US)
Susan Scharwiess Berlin, Germany (US)
Shlomo Sharlin Haifa, Israel
Georgeta Stegarescu Bucharest, Rumania
Juliana Stilar Bucharest, Rumania
Edit Szerdahelyi Budapest, Hungary
Ilze Trapenciere Riga, Latvia
Adriane Wachholz Berlin, Germany
( ) = other country of birth or migration