Reconciliation: Fact or Fiction?
Report on the 10th annual SiT Working Meeting
May 30 - June 3, 2001, in Prague

After learning in Dubrovnik in 2000 that reconciliation is more than the end of violence, we decided to focus on the topic a second time in another beautiful city with a different history of reconciliation. While Dubrovnik has suffered wide-spread recent destruction, Prague has some of the oldest (and most beautiful!) buildings in Central Europe - as well as a marvelous international reputation related to the Charter 77 movement of dissidents around Vaclav Havel and the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Our Organizing Chair, Olga Marlin, arranged with the Department of Psychology of the Charles University to sponsor our meeting, allowing us to use an affordable university hotel within the city limits.

To encourage focus, we asked all applicants to send in a 1 to 3 page case-study on a country-specific or personal example of an attempted reconciliation which either did or didn't work out. This new approach helped us to go deeper into the topic at an experiential level and became the basis of the most beautiful Reader we have ever had, edited by Jancis Long and sent out to the participants before the meeting. The essays also helped us to attract and select participants from a number of countries which have not yet been represented in our work, including Austria, Poland, Chechnya, Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan. Our attempts to have a Kosovar Albanian were foiled by the amount of time our candidate needed to get a UN passport and then a visa for the Czech republic, but we did have 2 'international helpers' presently working there. In the end, we had 41 participants from 17 countries. Unfortunately, aside from the usual numbers of sicknesses and conflicting obligations, several of our members from Macedonia had been unable to come due to new transit-visa requirements in several countries (which also added to the stress of the Organizing Committee) as well as the alarming hostilities which had just broken out between the ethnic-Albanian and the other Macedonians.

As in real life, the non-arrival of large parts of the Macedonian group was related to financial issues. The Soros Open Society Fund, which has supported us twice wholly and twice partially in the past, seems to be withdrawing from Central Europe, so we found out very shortly before the meeting that we would have to carry the meeting on 'Plan B' (self-financing by our own members), with $1700 from the Norwegian Family therapists in the NFFT and some travel-money assistance from our US sister organization. Later, the Macedonians wished that this had been allocated for them, but at the time the arrangements had been made, we had based them on geographical distances.

Arrival was exciting as usual, with greetings of old friends and curiosity about the new ones. Pictures and displays of our work together in the last 10 years were put up in the meeting room while the dynamics of our group work developed on their own. As one of our most experienced members wrote, "the resources our group can use are, first of all, our feelings and the strength coming from being connected to each other....A special resource is our intellectual capacity, by which we are able to reach and keep our emotional and relational reserves alive." A sociologist who had joined us for the first time said " During the SIT meeting I have discovered both the individual perspective and concentrating on the process as enriching the process of cognition." This counterpoint between intellectual and experiential aspects of the program and largely informal personal linkages was the backbone of the meeting. (All cursive quotes are from reports written by the participants.)

The formal program, made up of panels of the participants on various dimensions of reconciliation such as group level, personal level, the Balkans, or Post-Soviet ethnic conflicts and their impacts on families, was opened by a Key-note speech by Dana Nemcova a well-known Czech dissident who was a member of Charter 77, and founded the Counseling Center for Refugees in Prague. She spoke of a climate of "excessive reconciliation" after the Velvet Revolution which turned into a kind of a "fiction that will lay vengeance on all of us later on". In her view, reconciliation really is an urgent challenge and an effort to cure relationships. She supports "successful handling of one’s own negative feelings in the light of truthful discernment" and "withdrawal from unrealistic expectations." With this, she gave us very good groundwork for our topic. How far would we be able to use this wisdom in our dealings with each other in the days ahead?

Thanks to the new format developed by the Prague Committee, we had small groups each of us attended twice which were a great help in processing the material, getting personal, and getting acquainted. " I think everybody appreciated having several small discussion groups in the afternoon that enabled us more sharing and provided especially the newcomers with an intimacy and feeling of safety in a kind of " family settings"." We were surprised to find reporting back to the plenary afterwards how similar the process had been in all three groups.

The social aspects of our program came together in the traditional 'taste-sharing evening' at the end of the first day, to which everyone brings some food from their country. We also wanted to dance and to look at videos from our ten years together. In order to economize, we only had the video recorder for that one evening, so it was important to the Chechenians to show a film they had brought along about the war and the suffering in their country. As this unfolded, toward the end of the party, we all gradually realized that it was a mistake The Russian-speakers among us spoke with the protagonists and any of the others who were deeply troubled by the trauma that had been shown to us. Still, the reporter was right who said, "... if we wish to include people from the most troubled parts of the world, we have to find a way to process together their trouble, and the ways it troubles us." Absolutely.

More generally, too, the Chechen participants touched us deeply and were a very important part of the process of the Prague meeting, even though reconciliation is not their topic at the moment. On the other hand, Tajikistan has had a unique reconciliation process. Grateful as we were for this input, our five members who could work as translators ended up quite exhausted because these thrree participant had much more difficulty with English than we had expected. Was all of this an over-extension of our abilities?

Yes, in some ways it was. We have decided that one working language is all we can manage. On the other hand, it was the first time that we had two specific parties to a conflict interacting within our meeting. (We had had 'NATO' and 'Serbs' during the 'Kosovo-War' but had not yet managed to have Kosovar or Macedonian Albanians). Some people had feared we might become more of a pressure-group than a meeting-place. Here we had Russians and Chechens interacting very humanly, particularly in the small groups, and a kind of implied comparison between the ways in which the Chechens and the Macedonians were suffering each in their own situation. Maybe a Macedonian expressed feelings which the Chechens also had:

"Speaking on our Prague meeting about Macedonia, helped us (Macedonians) to speak up about what bothers us, speak up about what heaviness we felt all this time, about IT'S development, about IT'S "unnatural" evolution. Tried to share with the GROUP! What to share? Feelings?

Tried to get feedback? To have understanding, compassion or supports even?

What were the results?

Alarming on possible SUBVERSION on the meeting's very beginning!?

Sticking etiquette of trying to demolish, split, divide the group ....

Was it a fear facing with the truth? The reality!"

Other people also expressed hurts - one personal, one organizational, and one related to her nationality - but many more expressed heartfelt thanks to Olga Marlin and the Prague Committee for having made a memorable meeting possible.

Problems in Chechnya and other parts of the former Soviet Union were discussed the next morning in a panel, and we did our best to return to the focus on reconciliation. Does it vary according to context? (family, nations?) or according to process? (by opening one's heart or by strengthening boundaries? Via dialogue and joint projects or by acceptance of otherness and differentiation? How much do we have responsibility? And how much does the past dictate whether we can reconcile or not? What is 'negative' reconciliation?). Amidst all this wealth of material and questions, we were all actually doing our best to be adult and professional, so that the meeting could continue constructively in the face of honest difficulties.

"This Prague meeting was for me the most challenging, intellectually satisfying one.

It seemed to me, with its developing professionalism ( in a positive sense!) as a turning point, making a shift from a "friendly movement" to a "stimulating circle of colleagues", who are devoted to help people. And we all were enthusiasted in our "mission"....

There was the first time I have got the feeling, that sooner or later a danger can appear among us because people we are supporting and taking responsibility for could belong to opposite political sides, and our involvement can arise tensions between us." The more we have understood reconciliation, the better we will be able to meet this challenge!

That afternoon, we were all ready for some free time to see the city and a dinner downtown
contributed by a member to celebrate our 10th anniversary and her birthday. The aesthetic beauty of the Obecni Dum and its history as facilitator of an important reconciliation within our group contributed to an evening which many of us found personally healing and enjoyable. "The celebration resonating with the SIT anniversary was a great occasion to share good and pleasant things with others."

Thus strengthened, we were able to have a joint brainstorming session "What is Reconciliation?" on our last morning together. Two scribes recorded what was said, some main points of which are attached to this report. In a nutshell: "The most important about reconciliation itself for me is the "win-win result" of it, the refusal as from the desire to win by any price as well, on the other side, from the secondary advantages of being a victim." Or, more personally: "I really felt something had happened to me precisely because of those meetings. It seems to me the result is, perhaps implicitly, I find myself standing on the grounds much more firmly. Explicitly, I think, it is because of my being kindly incorporated in the team of different people from different countries nonetheless dealing with the same problems I myself try to deal with. My inner sources seem to build up." We closed with a Business Meeting in which the written 'Structure of SiT' was formally adopted, Andrea Petrits and Kai Leonhardt were elected as new Board Members in place of two whose terms had ended, and we made future plans. Finally, Vera Kattermann offered a closing ritual with a ball of wool which we threw from one to another, each time with a wish. All of us appreciated this experience, which demonstrated what Karmit Zysman had told us: "Reconciliation begins with the realization that everyone who is on the planet will be staying."

Compiled by Susan Scharwiess on the basis of reports by the Prague Committee and 19 participants


WHAT IS RECONCILIATION?

(combined notes: Robert and Eszter)
State of inner peace

v It is a process that has different stages

v It is inner hope not to lose hope

v It is reaffirming of humanity

v There must be some work with negative feelings done internally

Wisdom, when you think about the future

From mind to soul

R. is self-acceptance and acceptance of others

v It is flexibility of heart and mind

v It is understanding the limits of the other person

v It is breaking down stereotypes

v It is reconstructing interpersonal bridges

  • Ability to achieve a higher goal