(HOW) CAN WE SPEAK IN TIMES OF WAR?

Report on the 8th International Working Meeting of Systems in Transition
Displaced by war from Ohrid, Macedonia to Dobogókö, Hungary
May 19-23, 1999

    This meeting almost didn’t happen at all. It had been planned for Ohrid, Macedonia (in a combination, perhaps, of political naiveté and as an expression of the need for peace in the region). In any case, this plan had to be given up a few days after NATO bombing had begun. Where could we meet? (Which country could be entered by all our members at that moment?) Who could organize? Could a suitable hotel be found so late?
    Hungary was a good choice on all counts including relative proximity to the afflicted region. Tom Pick and Andrea Petrits managed to find a beautiful hotel in the mountains north of Budapest and, with the help of the local KIÚT Szociális és Mentálhigiénés Egyesület to secure it for our meeting. Jancis Long took care of the innumerable tasks of organization, assisted by Branka and Miodrag Dadasovi? from the original Macedonian organizing committee and Attila Grünczeisz, our Central Coordinator.
    We had 38 participants who came to us from 15 countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Norway, Portugal, Rumania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, the USA, and Yugoslavia (3 participants had originally come from Australia, Great Britain, and the U.S., 4 others had lived for decades in other places.) Seven were newcomers (including 2 children of participants and 2 students who had helped to organize the meeting). 21 had participated in more than one meeting previously. Maybe this was the reason that so much of our meeting seemed to ‘just happen:’ once the meeting was underway the multi-level process that creates whatever is essential and memorable to a particular year was the work of everyone. Most of us are psychologists and psychiatrists, family- and group-therapists, but this time we also had a nurse, a sociologist, a music therapist, a general practitioner (m.d.), and a theologian who works with refugees.
    This was the second of a projected series of three annual meetings on the topic OVERCOMING VIOLENCE – persons, families, & societies. We had been planning to focus on Poverty and Resilience this year. This had been the theme choice of our Macedonian Organization Committee which certainly reflected deep concerns in their country before the war broke out. Now, as so often unattended poverty had turned into a war. This was unfortunately a laboratory situation related to our focus on violence. Would we be able to speak with each other at all under these conditions? What kinds of resilience might be able to help us do that?
    This report will be a combination of a narrative on what happened and a compilation of the 31 personal reports written by participants in efforts to understand it. The issues raised in these reports will be presented as they coincide with the narrative:

    After a day of arrivals and greetings, we started our work on Thursday with an introductory workshop which itself became food for controversy as people were asked to mention only their feelings at the moment (in other words, to leave their Jungian ‘personae’ aside):
I suggest, in the very beginning, people might be introduced themselves in a less tensed way as they were offered ( by: "express how are you feeling and add something about yourself").
    First, people- especially, the newcomers, are full of expectations, some of them are scared because of not being sure if the others would understand them well. They need some time to adjust into the group and feel a safe, peaceful, supportive environment. (The more that our major theme was dealing with violence and war..) I am not sure if they felt it. At least from the beginning. As Jan said, he was scared and could not say too much on behalf of his feelings, but at the end he said he felt very well...The other issue is, that expression of emotions is really a difficult task to be done even in your native language, and not then in the foreign language. I suppose because of these and other reasons the atmosphere in the group was sort of embarrassed and tensed during our first group plenary.
    This tension, which could be felt physically throughout large portions of the meeting, may have been related to the question of whether we were present as persons or as national representatives. The two main view-points on this issue were:
    It has been said once at the meeting that we are all representing our countries at SIT. Well, I am not. I am pretty sure that Croatian government would never send and authorize me to represent it anywhere, so I am not representing. I might be bringing some of my cultural heritage to the group due to the fact that I come from Croatia, that I am Croatian, which is simply because some twenty of my grand parents, whose names I know have lived in Croatia and considered themselves Croats, and nobody ever denied that to them. Additionally, I am as a matter of principle, against any representation. That is why we have invented civil society, NGOs and all kind of groups. To be able to participate ourselves, and work for ourselves, and protect our own interests instead of asking some "representatives" to do that for us. This is the essential thing we need to learn in transition. That we can participate directly.
    This position was very valuable to many people: I saw people from different countries do not identify each other with their governments Nobody thought about the opponent " You are wrong because I a`m sure you share the ideas of your government and I don`t like your government at all. That is why I do not respect You". Such attitude to representatives of Russia has been observed till recently. It happend due to Russia was associated with the former USSR.
    The other side of this question: One of the things that grabbed my attention, was the big difficulty we had, to face "collective responsibility". Maybe because for many of us it has a negative connotation. It was used in its most monstrous forms during communism.
    So I mean, I can't know why, but there was a big difficulty to face the responsibility that the whole group bears when one person from it (one representative of it) has done or said something. An enormous difficulty to take on our shoulders the bit of responsibility that I as a citizen of a country have for what my country's government, my country's mainstream is doing in the moment. Not to identify with it, not to take more than I bear as one citizen. But not to deny it.
    Many people saw a possible solution containing both approaches:
    The main problem for me is the possibility to find some position which is different from the equation of people with the state (the conflict with the asking for some participants’ apologies for their states’ politics) and does not take from citizens all the responsibilities for their state’s actions (to do it, it is the same as saying that «we do not have any power»).
    This is reminiscent of the position with which Systems in Transition had started out in 1992: to work specifically with role-plays as a tool to understanding, and also to be aware of ‘involuntary role-plays’ which could involve our ideas about each others’ nationalities – while at the same time building fellowship and getting to know each other well enough individually that we didn’t end up ‘believing’ these role-plays.
    In any case, the fellowship was a reality in Dobogókö:
    "If I am asked to give a response, a summary over the 5 days in Dobogókó, I would focus on the people, the SIT members I have met. When I speak of collecting experience, gathering new ideas, learning about different aspects of a topic from different angles, I mean listening to others, asking the "more clever ones" and finally but not least, finding friends."
    This fellowship was to be a supportive resource for us in the days to come.
    The rest of the program that first morning was devoted to accessing other resources.
    - Susan Scharwiess presented a general concept of transition based on the past history of SiT which combines circular non-solutions (rat-races) such as disorientation/busyness or victim/perpetrator with meta-level answers such as perspective or responsibility. (See the short version of the paper attached to this report).
    - Branka and Miodrag Dadasovic, the designated organizers of the originally planned Ohrid meeting, presented a workshop on values designed to stimulate our identity and resilience. Each of us was given a page with a pyramid printed on it and asked to fill in our values, starting with four base-value and working up to one at the top. (Most of us worked from the top down in spite of instructions). Then we were asked to turn to a neighbor and make a joint pyramid combining our values, then into groups of four and eight. Time did not allow us to continue into groups of 16 and then our total group, but the reports from the sub-groups displayed a moving panorama of what is important to all of us from so many placed. Some form of loving connection with the world was the top value in all groups.
    Strengthened by these presentations, lunch, and a sunny break outdoors, we dared to face the war and more specifically the question as to whether we can talk with each other about it. Our general approach was that someone is doing something to our world, so that we are all on one side. (This was exemplified by the fact that we as a group had been displaced by war from Macedonia. We wanted to beware of our leaders’ hidden agendas, and attentive to the parallel process between realities in the room, within each one of us, and out in the world.
    Still, we did not know whether we could talk precisely because SiT is not a political group in the sense that we aimed to have one conviction as to how the wars (2 = the war in Kosovo + the NATO bombing of Serbia) could be overcome. While all of us are against war, many of us were torn between a feeling that ethnic cleansing in Kosovo had to be stopped and our opposition to bombing in general and of course specifically as concretized in the experience of our participant from Belgrade. Not all of us could have put it as simply as the Euro-northamerican perpetuated violence on balcanic societies.
    This first conversation on the war was very careful. For instance, controversy arose as to whether we should break up into small groups or not. The salomonic decision was to do both: The plenary was continued with 18 people, while smaller groups of 6 and 12 met simultaneously.
    Reporting back to the plenary session, our conclusions included:
    - Powerlessness as a major result of oppression and bombing, which was also sensed in our group. One participant said we may not be as powerless as we feel, while our participant from Belgrade reported that people who had felt ‘in control’ break down sooner in a crisis.
    - Our own ability to talk about these topics is based on each person maintaining autonomy.
    - The question as to what could have been done sooner to stop Milosevic (answer: take the policies of his party seriously when they were announced and while their power developed.)
    One motto in this connection was ‘Don’t trust your leaders. They’re collaborating anyway!’
    - If the state doesn’t stick to human rights, people will give up their responsibility.
Not punishing the perpetrator is not verificating the victim.
    - A sense that we DID, after all, have a common goal: Stop Milo, Stop Nato!
    Many of us learned a lot from this concentrated exchange and cautiously felt that maybe yes, we would be able to talk about the war. In any case, we were all ready for a Macedonian Evening held downstairs next to the swimming-pool to remind us all of the beauties of Ohrid. Aside from delicious sweets and brandy, Macedonian ring-dancing and ping-pong, many conversations continued from the first day’s program.
    Friday opened by including the question of what kinds of research we need to develop our focus on violence. We moved on to workshops which also contributed to our resilience by dealing with practical and professional questions:
    - Economic Reforms, Poverty and Violence in Russia; Children and Violence on the Screen
    - Resiliency in Family Therapy/ Families in Russia Today
    - Secondary and Vicarious Traumatization; Trauma and Memory
    Maybe we experienced these workshops particularly positively because we knew that they were ‘the easy part’, in spite of their heavy subjects, because we would have to deal with the war some more.
    It was not planned that the war should return as a topic that afternoon. After lunch, there was a plenary presented by 4 Hungarians who had been doing rehabilitation work with teachers in an ethnic Hungarian area of Croatia called East Slavonia. The work had been difficult and stopped for reasons which were not completely clear.
    One of the 4 was drawing a map to explain the situation to us when he was stopped by our participant from Belgrade, who protested his military language as she also protests that at home. She obviously didn’t want to hurt anyone and asked us to "Think from the inside. Don’t assume I am opposite to you." She called for more language sensitivity and said that she was very frightened to hear professionals speaking in this way. She found the group’s work too ethnically oriented, something she was trying to overcome.
    At this point, a general sense of uncertainty and disorder was in the room. Apparently, parallel process was taking place. Our uncertainty was in a very mild way like what people in the afflicted region were experiencing. At this point, rumors were mentioned such as that NATO had been talked into bombing by Hungarians who wanted to re-expand their national boundaries.
    One reason for our uncertainty was our own extremely complex reaction to this participant. We all admired her intensely, both personally and for having the courage to come to this meeting in the middle of the bombing and to end up being ‘the only Serbian.’
    One person wrote: It was/especially/,meaningful for me that Z., a psychologist from Belgrade, came to the meeting. I felt a great admiration for her and for her ability to contain her feelings and reactions. I felt guilty about not being able to offer her more meaningful help in her crisis. I tried at least to be supportive and to tell her that I was against the war and the destruction, which was unleashed on her country. As a child, I lived through the war and bombings, so I knew what she was going through. I felt that what I have said to her was inadequate and pale in comparison with the terrible reality that she was living through. Hopefully, we all could give her some strength through our love and concern and through our shared sorrow.
    Many of us had a lot to learn about what the bombing meant to the population, for instance in terms of continuous sleep disturbance and its psychological effects. During our meeting, the electrical system in Belgrade was destroyed, so that she could no longer call home in the morning and find out if everyone was O.K. Another participant described a learning experience related to this fact: I was touched , when I asked Zorica in the group to keep in touch and she said, with a bitter smile and a little irony, that she would have probably hired some pigeon to bring us the message she was O. K. I hope and prey that war would finish soon and she and other people in Yugoslavija enjoyed peace again.
    All of this is related to the question discussed above as to whether participants were persons or representatives of their countries. Interestingly, we didn’t fall into the trap of blaming her for her government’s policies – we almost fell into another one, that of ‘helping’: "There were trials on the group's side to prove that the war-afflicted participant needed a special help, or healing /the trial was basicly rejected."
    The question of our relationships with Z. was to return the next morning.
    First, let’s look at the issues that came up around that afternoon. The person who had been explaining the map reflected later:
    The avalanche was triggered by a keyword. It was the "occupation". Now I know, It is a very important word, because it serve for identification of one side in the position of the perpetrator and automatically the other side in the position of the victim. The problem of "occupation" becames the problem of identification of the victim and the perpetrator, and the problem of splitting the reality at the same time.
    The individual identities were overrided by the ethnical, east ? west, Nato ? not Nato "identities" and a paranoic discourse rised on.
    At the time of the '98 meeting we were all on the same side, regarding to the problems of violence. We were all together in our koherent identification with the victim. At the same time we strictly avoided and rejected the identification with the perpetrator. The identification with the perpetrator is definitely more difficult for us, mental - health professionals, impregnated with the discourse of tolerance and acceptance of others.
    The present military conflict concretized the relationship of victim ? perpetrator, giving some new possibilities for the identification. The problem arised from the different opinion, related to the position of one or another side involved into the military conflict. Minimum two different reality was constituted inside the group.
(The report goes on here to the topic of lack of coherence in the group, which will be discussed later in this report).
    The significant word at the moment is perpetrator. The word "occupation" had implied that the occupiers were perpetrators. (As we later learned, the use of this word has been pivotal in the process of break-up in former Yugoslavia). That may be one reason that Z. had reacted so strongly to this particular use of militaristic language.
    As mentioned above, we never thought of marking her as a perpetrator – but rather, the one who had used the word became a ‘perpetrator’ within the group. As he very correctly analyzed, this is an immensely difficult position, but not just because of our mental-health training. It must also be remembered that every single one of us had given a lot of time, effort, and/or money to be able to attend this meeting, particularly in order to find ways of overcoming the wars! In spite of which we ended up playing out the dynamics of perpetration among ourselves.
    Another member of the group of 4 reported:
Events at the Dobogókö SiT conference Thursday through Saturday shook me to the core. However, it also helped me a good deal, with a lot of confusion on the way, to understand the perpetrator-victim dynamics within myself as well as giving me new insights about the power of parallel process and projective identification.
    On Friday afternoon, it seemed to me that the dynamic of the war was played out almost palpably in the large group, except perhaps that Kosovar Albanians were not represented in the process, Why? Maybe because an implied rule of the perpetrator-victim game is that the roles are always unambiguous, one is either a perpetrator with a black hat, or a victim wearing a white hat, one couldn't possibly be both. If we include them in the equation, the NATO bombing victims could become 'accidental victims of justified perpetration.' What I found discouraging as it happened, and fascinating after the event was the way in which the dynamic of the larger inter-ethnic conflict gets reproduced in the smaller group at home. Almost the very thing I had described in my paper about our work with small Hungarian communities in war-torn parts of Croatia got played out between the thirty-odd of us who were present on that Friday afternoon.
    An even more systemic understanding of the discussion that afternoon was contributed in the report of a colleague with a lot of experience in the Yugoslav wars:
    What do we pick up from (the) presentation. Do we get excited to learn what happens with a minority group when it gets divided in ethno-political war which is actually not their war, and do we explore methods that might work in reconciling them. No, we have decided to neglect that part and deal with either old historical issues of violence and terminological issues of weather it was actually occupation or not. If we stayed open looking into the process of what actually happens in this group we would probably come to the point that the split of the group happened because the group was exposed to two totalitarian and non-democratic administrations, with no opportunities to actively participate, but to adjust and survive. The need to adjust and survive might have caused a guilt feeling that is now shown as aggression towards the part of the group which have chosen to survive another way, or "under" another administration. The funny thing is that people somehow think that they owe some loyalty to administrations and governments, even in the situation when it is so obvious that their own welfare is not the priority for that government.
    Theoretically, if we managed to bring some awareness of these issues to the group including giving them permission to survive under all kind of crazy governments, we might expect some reconciliation to happen. Additional question is do we believe in reconciliation as such, because if we do not we shall not be efficient, and people we work with will feel it, and will not believe us.
    I think this is the paper to write, and this is our job, instead of defining who fucked whom and when.
    All of this had happened in little more than an hour.
    Fortunately, we had 2 experiential workshops to round out the day:     To our surprise and delight, the hotel had organized a live band to play that evening, whereupon we all broke into energetic and abandoned dancing. This fit very well with the fact that Eduardo Pereira Marques had prepared English translations of Portugal’s famous Fado songs as his contribution to the theme of poverty (see enclosed texts). They were complimented by some beautiful hymns sung by our pastor, who had to leave early the next morning, and a collection of songs from Central Europe. We finished with "We Shall Overcome," sung by everyone together.
    It is fortunate that we were all so strengthened and relaxed, because the third morning of the conference was the most challenging. A Bulgarian participant started speaking in the Morning Reflections and then continued straight into the time that had been planned for her presentation "What is it the War makes us see more clearly?" The issues she covered ranged from the fact that she found an apology from the organizers overdue (for some very unfortunate difficulties in her travel) to Western guilt for Yalta. She was appalled at the way Z. was being treated but not willing to tell us exactly what she meant by that. There was a great deal of emotional energy in the presentation and quite a lot of confusion among the listeners. Many of the 31 reports wrestled with the meaning of this event:
    6. The Bulgarian presentation had a great impact, contributing to the group's finding a focus here and now on poverty and the war.
    Responsibility was dumped in our midst on Saturday morning in quite indigestible form when Jenia asked the westerners in particular if they could contain the pain and criticism felt by many "easterners" for events ranging from Yalta to the present war. Clearly this question touched on something very difficult and important, but was presented in a way that there was no right answer to it. It invited a splitting of the group into "western" and "eastern" that it is my impression both the region and SIT (cf: Susan's diagram) have been evolving from in the last few years. In some ways this session was a demonstration of "victim-perpetrator language" (Tom identified such language for us many times in the conference) that leads to "role locks" (Attila introduced this useful phrase)and shuts down rather than encourages open investigation of ones own responsibility whether one is experiencing oneself as a victim or is being experienced as a perpetrator.
    This year we had a problem with the members of the Bulgarian group who were not met in time and who had to wait for many hours to be picked up. Among them were two members who returned after being absent for some years, they expected an apology for what has happened to them. If we could have processed this event in the group, we could have avoided an escalation of a conflict. Since our group functions as a bridge between Easterners and Westerners, we should be aware that not all of us can cross this bridge in the same way. We should be alert to our different status and to our divergent means and possibilities. People from the East often feel burdened by their lack of funds, it makes them feel inferior. Sometimes we should respect our differences, if we acknowledge them and process them, they would not detract from our collaboration as much. Even though we cannot avoid conflicts, we can learn how to work them through with empathy.
    ... the group became polarized into victims and the much more numerous perpetrators, with the atmosphere of a criminal court. The dynamic of the beginning of inter-ethnic conflict was played out. The ones who felt injured became the 'just perpetrators' in the course of protesting the legitimacy of the other 'just perpetration' represented by the NATO air attacks. No people were killed or physically wounded in the process, of course, and the nature of the perpetration was such that it remained deniable, By then, I felt angry rather than guilty.
    To me, the conflict that arose through Jenias intervention was shocking and hurtful, but afforded me a lot of "true" learning, as involving both thoughts and feelings. I realized how nice solutions to conflict resolution seem when made up only in the mind and how difficult it becomes to live them when put to a test. I felt very conscious towards my feelings, noticing what the conflict did to me and so what the REAL challenges are when trying to overcome hatred and conflict.
    There were a few uncomfortable times at the meeting, and the experience of someone being asked to "confess" to a wrong or tactless comment was frightening but enlightening; thank god, SIT is not a cult and was not susceptible to this demand.
    On the meeting and tensions we faced, made me remind the contrast of gentle ways the aristocratic "well raised " have (when secure) and the tough bursting ways the poor structurally violented have, reminded me the German philosopher Writer Berthold Brecht’s verse " Violent isn’t the rushing stream who jumps down the Mountains but the Rocky walls who constrain the waters." ( I would like to have the original in German, bitte J )
    ... a few things I can say about Zhenya’s presentation. At the beginning, I envied her in a way for her very assurance of being purely on the side of victims. (One person wrote on the questionnaire that what our focus on violence has taught her is that she can be either a victim or a perpetrator.)
    Looked at it in this way, the interesting part was her question whether we perpetrators could take what she had to say. In this sense, she embodied the central effort of our meeting: to find out how we can speak to each other in the face of the Unspeakable (war).
    In Dobogokö, there were clear points in the group-process when discussing about the war outside became as a mediator for attacking impulses inside the group. There were almost direct accusations about some of us being part of a demonic conspiration. There were almost direct accusations about some of us being part of unresponsible, soulless powers. There were allusions that the "right" approach, or evaluation of the situation outside was only with these or those persons.
    These processes, group-dinamically, we can identify as tendencies to scapegoat and/or to create an "identified patient" - in order to project both the group’s need to be taken care and the aggressive impulses. And we know, that in the "flight/fight" phase of a group development these phenomena are necessary and common. In my understanding, as I wrote about it above, we are not really through this phase of group-development.
    I can hear the argument that all what happened in Dobogokö was taken place because the war were raging outside and had its influence on all of us. This is also right - and we can remember that one of possibilities S.i.T. is carrying is to modelling the actual context outside. But, another, maybe even more important feature of S.i.T. is /has to be/ to be as reflective as possible in order to be able to distinguish between personal, group-dynamical, and political, intercultural processes and to find a " healing" balance between them.
    In my opinion it was a mistake of Roman and Zenya to cancel their prepared workshop and to change the theme without designed moderation. So she was in the very difficult situation to lead it herself at a time when she was highly emotionally affected, Therefore she couldn't accept Tom’s attempt to moderate the situation. I thank her for her courage to pronounce what she felt ‘without a fig-leaf’ (openly) . I hope she didn't feel hurt by the reaction of the group to finish the session by standing up and going to the table with coffee and drinks. I would be glad to see her again in Dobrovnik.
    As she herself put it:
    When I say to a Western person that his country's official representatives in my country are treating me and Bulgarian people as if we are morons, and humiliating us, I'm doing it because I have trust in this person.
    That he is able to differentiate that I am not accusing him, and I am not hating him. But that he as a representative of his country, who enjoys many of the privelledges that what is done by his officials leads to, has to face a responsibility. And to be careful by no way to continue to marginalize me, since his country's officials have done enough about that. If there's to be any real relation between us. If he is really interested in those matters and in not promoting the big problems, we try to work on.
    Obviously, this was a very important experience. It involved content and process – and particularly the question of how the group dealt with this and other difficult moments:
    We, the group, did the best that could be done with it all under the circumstances: we contained the animosity and rejoined each other on other issues. However, to continue the analogy with an ethnic conflict, a potential line of communication was left open, maybe even cultivated, but under the circumstances there seemed to be no way to have a constructive dialogue across the divide.
    I think that we need more consistent and systematic structure for the process. Specifically, I suggested that we have group facilitators / from those of us who are experienced group therapists/ who will attend and facilitate the group process in the large group.
    Well-disposed relations between participants, responsibility in discussing the problems and searching the ways for their decision were typical for the meeting. It gives us a confidence that we all together can do some useful things for achievement of understanding between people from different countries.
    2. It is useful to foresee a facilitator for the Groups Plenary who could guide the process of discussing and to be helpful in some critical situations (for example in appearence of burst of strong emotions or when people keep silence for long time).
    I felt on my own skin efects of unsolved identity and aggression problems. But this I took as personal problems which are of corse very toxic for the practice as we know from therapy experience .Anyway, main point of my impresion is the fact that if we want to be serious profesional group we have to pay much more attention on deeper understanding of the particular problems. Like this there are some similarities with so called "peace and reconciliation " work which is very often very superficial and even retraumatising.
    After having experienced the Dobogokö-days my conclusion is that we are at the crossrod of either to explore more deliberately our own emotions and group-experience /and so, to strengthen our inner authority and autonomy/ - or to go into a gloomy territory of proving repeatedly our "righteous" standpoints and create a "cognitive chaos" with a high potential of acting out.
    Looking back to SIT 1999 I am thinking it would have been very interesting to risk an open dialogue between the polarian positions concerning the question how to solve the Serbian-Kosovo Albanian conflict - we as the group around taking care of a respecting atmosphere on the one side, and to find a position for ourselves on the other.
    At the time of the current systems meeting, the situation was more difficult and the group was definitely more incoherent. Incoherence (perhaps not in the sense of confusion) but in the sense of uncertainty of shared or common meanings (and beliefs). I am shure, that the trasparentness of our social (group) reality is based in the coherence of meanings for the all society (group) members. The shared communicative patterns, values, beliefs are very important for anticipation of the reaction of others.
    The incoherence caused high level of anxiety between the group members. And we were not aware of the danger. The majority of the group expected some kind of peaceful resolution of the problem.
    In certain circumstances, the group becames the modell of social reality. And the ongoing tensions becames the modell of war-making.
    The group was not prepared to identify the ongoing process and to prevent the possible harm, caused by accepting the alternative reality, which was offered by some group members. Everybody was involved into the the discourse of war and the opinion of informal "observers" was rejected. Some group members expressed the lack of leader, able to prevent the process of destruction, and others verbalized the need for a more explicite group structure. The situation, we experienced in the group was very similar to those, I experienced at the beginning of the Balkan conflict many years ago. And the reaction of the systems ?group was allmost the same, than the reaction of the international community, regarding to the Croatian and Bosnian war.
    It is quite clear, that the "rebellion against the civilization" is a problem of transition. Namely, the process of social transition contributed to the development of uncertainty, extremely important to the de-construction of the individual identities.
    From the other side, the process of reality deconstruction is possible only if the certain society (or group) hasn't negative experiences with the irrational ideologies. The experience of the irrationality could contribute to the development of more explicite group structure and more determined individual and group boundaries.
    The protagonist of this event on the 3rd morning challenges the group to find a form that is to fit the hot-issues content (so that it) can start to be explored.
    This for me means: Processing hot issues - with what real processing means is not the aim of this group. It has been announced so. But in reality, one way i can comprehend what I see to be done is: This group is creating a structure now IN CASE it has to process heavy feelings. Its aim seems to be to show that even in moments when our countries are in war, we can be together and have a good time, and have good relations as human beings.
    If that is the aim, well, it's a good enough aim. Let's make it clear that it is. And not speak of understanding more about hot issues. Let's get together and create forms of meditating, of dancing, of .... But not to pretend we can reach deeper knowledge by avoiding the feelings that go along with those issues, which are present the moment we meet and start to talk.
    Or let's be clear we are just a scientific group- no experiential things. Because they pass through tensions.
    And we don't want tensions.
    In spite of her judgement of our lacks, her own process that morning was quite inspiring:
    Still, may be it's important to not withhold that it was impressive for me, and very teaching somehow, to see the big capacity of this group to be fluid, to take steps after steps, and to be, from some point on, so sincere in its expression, so careful to be true to the feelings, such as they were at each moment. I don't think there are so many groups where this can be so clearly experienced. What I had to give was met with close to resentment feelings (clearly expressed - which is a big resource too of any human community), and then step by step with the processing of it, the expression was changing - I could feel, but also even see the distance overcome by many people literally step by step- until at the closing, such closeness was experienced, and even the opposite range of feelings was starting to be expressed - that was a deeply moving experience. Very shattering also, for me. And you can imagine how teaching this was for a usually not very patient person, as I am, and whose self-confidence has often depended a lot on how the others see me: to have to endure, to have to not loose oneself, to have to wait and the whole thing to turn to be so very rewarding at the end. I think I ended up more alive, and overcame several personal "edges" that before that have been impossible for me to pass over.
    To return to the events of that Saturday morning, we had a very brief version of Jancis Long’s thoughts on the similarity between violence and cancer (a longer version is included with this report), and then broke into small groups to work discuss the future development of our work on violence, including research, fund-raising, group-process, and future meetings.
    Saturday afternoon had been planned as free time to visit Budapest, take a boat-ride on the Danube, sit in cafés or visit museums. During that time and the following ‘party’ back at our hotel, there was a lot of quiet work going on. A member who was participating for the 6th time described the process of that evening as follows:
What has happened with me during this 20 hours?
    - confrontation with hidden pain of mine, wounds of others, resistance from fear, aggression and harm..
    - seek for capacity to cope with unexpected regression, exhaustion, etc.
    - search for individual resources from the past and identity,
    - seek for collective resources from the common past of SiT,
    - recalling basic values and formulating actual tasks,
    - slowly set up rules and skills of handling conflicts/aggressions.
    - release of tensions through experiencing the ego strength of participants and cohesion of The SiT Group.
    Otherwise, we enjoyed each other’s company, got caught up, made plans – and laughed at ourselves until we got tears in our eyes watching the video of our meeting made by our Macedonian organizers and their daughter. Fortunately, our meeting-room was very large with many and varied sitting-arrangements, so that we could have the feeling of being one very large family hanging out together.
    On the last morning, it was evident that much had been accomplished. Although almost everyone was visibly totally exhausted, many of the rough edges had been slightly evened out. Our process seemed not to need to continue further in the direction of the day before, and some apologies were made. We were quite pleased to hear about Soon, everyone had to leave. Several ‘crashed’ in Budapest for a few days, either to enjoy the city or out of sheer exhaustion. Almost everyone was planning to return next year. The new participants said as they were leaving "It’s a good group." What a lovely synopsis!

Results of the meeting:

    I do consider the SIT meeting in Dobogokö the best meeting I have participated at. Definitely, it catched all my attention for the importance of analyzing and understanding the transition process. I focused on this occasion on the issue, that transition is ubiquitarious, it happens everywhere and always in our lives and in the lives of any community. If it happens harmoniously, leading to further stages which are functional, it is no worth to talk about it. If transition is dysfunctional it may lead to states in which tension concentrates and may lead to catastrophes. One reason for dysfunctional transition is violence either if it is the reason which claims the change, or the way in which change proceeds, develops. The transition with which we are dealing with is that one that emerges or leads to violence. Violence is bad. It hurts. We are a group of very nice people, strong enough to commit in fighting against such a bad thing. We are also generous enough to take from our time and energy for the search for solutions. We want to help the world to become better because we need it. We don’t want to rule the world. We don’t even want to rule each other. Although we have fought sometimes for leadership and power in the group, because we are, most of us, powerful and strong, it didn’t become a source of violence.
    I have learned how much can any knowledge grow if people from different cultures and ways of understanding discuss matters together.
    I felt to be lucky to be accepted by people from other countries to share experience with them.
    I can say is that this meeting was very useful for me, very rich and I have feeling I have learned a lot. But I need some more time to verbalize it.
    Few days ago I finished an article, written on psychological theories of inter-ethnicity and fascism. The text was definitively motivated by the group dynamic of the '99 Systems meeting.
    There is still feeling of dissapointment and seadnes. Last year I had impresion of the group with deeper and broader understanding . This year I had impresion that quite number of people doesn’t make real diference between " daily politics" and deeper psychological , social and historical aspects.
    ...my real experience taught me something different - about the value of humanism which is beyond professionalism (we really need the definition "who we are": "island of humanism" or "island of professionalism"?). I could call what we had there "a quality time", "special human experience" etc., not just a pure professional event.
    I think that SIT meetings themselves are the real experience of peace and reconciliation. I would have found it very difficult to survive the conversation mentioned above if I wouldn't have had this experience of positive family-centered atmosphere at SIT Budapest conference.
    The family issue is very important for us not only because it was the original idea of SIT to use "systems approach" (original family-centered approach to psychotherapy) to offer help to more broad social systems (you can tell that social orientation is the core framework of family therapy). I really believe that professional community has a family dimension with its many positive and negative sides. That is why in Budapest we had very difficult moments both as professionals and as people and I feel very strongly now that "fighting for humanism" often the same like "bombing for peace" (we found this formula with Jancis). The good side of family dimension of Budapest meeting was the participation of young persons. They offer us strength and resilience, bringing in the feeling of the positive family atmosphere.
    Looking inside to sense my feeling now that I sit to write the Report, I found a very warm feeling. I was even somewhat surprised by it - it's a warmth that comes along with an appreciation that sounds something like: "We've been through so much together... In our honest striving to find our ways through so difficult areas.. " It refers to that meeting, and also - to the people with whom the group has been started 8 years ago.
I am thankful to this group that it supported me in overcoming my personal inner voice, my "edge figure" that believed and screamed inside me: "The moment the people in your group reject you, you are finished, you'll lose yourself completely" I am thankful the group gradually, gave a negative feedback to this voice saying to it: "Not necessarily!":-). "And also rejection doesn't have to last for ever, you know". It was a growth experience for me. And I believe in the mutuality of human bonds and hope, it has been paralleled by many others too, encouraged to question the validity of such "ages"-long voices within us.
    My first participation was very emotional, exiting and tired. For me most interesting was that I met new people who lived in unknown lands and bring with themselves this context.
    I feel very inspired by a lot of ideas, experiences in the groups and most of all by the personal contacts and communications in the breaks and activities offered parallel to the official program of SIT 1999. What was touching me most, was to think about at what point war is beginning in our personal life, because the private space is the smallest cell of the community. At this point sometimes war is beginning and if not reflected spreads out .
    The big shadow which laid over the conference was the war in Kosovo, of course. I was very glad that we didn't discuss too much on a rational or intellectual level, especially because of our friends from Serbia, Macedonia and Kroatia. But we didn't deny the emotional tension because of the war. I felt myself more encouraged to ask about what people felt about the war. I remember the conference in Budapest during the war in former Yugoslavia, We didn't know each other during the conference in Bratislava as close as we did now. I felt unsure, didn't want to hurt anybody with too curious questions and so on. Just at the end of the conference it was possible to ask some questions directly and I remember a feeling of proudness that colleagues from Serbia talked to me about their stress and exhaustion and lost of perspective very personally.
    I came to Budapest with a big hope to get more information about what is happening in Balkans. May be it is strange, but I do not feel that I found a lot of new «statistical» information, but I could hear many personal views, and it helped me to see more clear what is happening. I would like to thank all the participants from the Balkan countries for their courage and trust to come and patience to explain their view points.
    I find very important the formulation of the steps of communication of peace. They are very practical and concrete, I would use them in my classes of political sciences. Also I hope to discuss them with students and continue their formulation.
    My feeling of disillusion in human ability to solve conflicts by words and not by bombs did not desapeared, but became a little bit less strong.
    The positive things that impressed me at this meeting, present at this step of the development of SiT were:
    1. There is more constant membership. People who form a core, or mainstream of the Network.
    2. There is a Board - it's more clear who takes responsibility.
    3. There is orientation towards creating a product - publishing and research.
    4. Members were encouraged to be critical, not sparing of negative feedback.
    5. The process itself was taken into account.
    It was long days which went fast. When friends have asked me about my time in Hungary, I have answered that it has been one of the most challenging, tiring, privileged days in my life. Why? For the first time I met people who experienced the suffering of war, either by living in the middle or next to it. People who asked WHY and I had absolutely no answer to give.
    I’ve started questioning all news I hear, I’ve experience warmth and inclusion although my life in Norway must seem like the incarnation of injustice compared to their struggle to live or make a living. I had and have to live with confusion (referring to Tom), and I want to prolong that state. Too often I start naming, describing or explaining, and then I loose the opportunity to let new information or experiences guide me further. I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to attend and join SIT. Thank you!
    I was glad to meet everybody in Dobogokyo. It was a perfect school of communication of people of different cultures.
    Our group to me, first of all, is a meeting of people having similar concerns about families and society and working on that area and becomes an effective affective support against a world who looks getting fewer space for democracy work.
    I think the most important things I got from the meeting all concerned the acceptance and concern I felt between everyone. Even the tenseness and difficulties still largely included a willingness to keep the contact and work going. By hearing the views of others, I was given the gift of different perspectives on the war in Kosovo. Even when I disagreed, I have tried to share those views with friends and colleagues here.
    Indeed a memorable strongly felt experience!
    Little bit sad for having no SIT99 conference held in Macedonia as it was planned (vis major), I’m full of impressions from our venue. I began to feel the Group as Group of belonging, instead of once a year seeing each other. Have impression that the Group quality is showing more and more, regarding formal as well as informal association.
    This years/s meeting in Hungary was intense , lively and interesting, sad and difficult, because the shadow of war was hanging over us. I have learned a great deal in the group process and in the workshops, also informally I met new and old members and enjoyed it.
    To say it again: it was a very successful conference in a very difficult situation. I came away exhausted and in some ways torn, but I am glad I went and feel enriched by the experience.
    I have taken home with me a spirit of shared feelings of responsibility for the fate of the world. Stronger even than last year I feel that I have made progress in becoming a little less German (thinking) and more "habitant of this world" (...my identity has become larger instead of shrinking). I felt a strong bond of "love, friendship and solidarity" beyond national differences. I felt a spirit of shared responsibility for what was going on inside and outside our meeting place. I liked the different layers of this experience: intellectual, emotional, aesthetic (through Eduardos and Jans and others’ beautiful singing) and bodily (enjoying the spontaneous dancing on our third evening).....
    I felt that the lively spirit of our meeting was a good sign not only in the sense that we could enjoy it as so many different nations but also as different generations. I see this as a sign that there is true interest for and acceptance of "the other" in whichever form it may appear.
    I have only started to understand that democracy gives people the "Freedom of choice", something that is a precious gift. Up to now, I wasn’t really aware of the true meaning of this.
    All in all, I felt that our group has matured a great deal! It felt like we are an umbrella which is opening out and taking shape. We are growing together and individualizing at the same time.
    I have changed. I have no capacity to deal with madness by using humor and protecting myself. Things that used to make me laugh and happy for the sake that I do not have to use my energy to deal with stupid issues, actually makes me frustrated now. My priority list is obviously different than the one of many people I am dealing with these days. I see this world as a learning opportunity, but everything else seams to be more important: personal narcissism, dealing with old issues instead of here and now etc. I keep on offering learning experience and gaining new knowledge but it sounds almost as insult to some important people because their priority is to get acknowledgment for their absolute knowledge and to sell their own expertise.
    ....when I had finished dealing with the emotions surrounding the accusatory tone and my perception of its destructiveness to the group, I realized that Jenia's question had brought in the missing theme of RESPONSIBILITY. Or rather the ever present but not quite named theme. For what violence that occurs in or near our lives should we assume some responsibility? How do we translate remorse/guilt/shame for suffering caused into meaningful action? Or suffering and anger about violence received? What do we do about being experienced as a perpetrator on the basis of ethnic, national or gender membership. What does accepting or rejecting responsibility mean in terms of nonviolent personal action? And, even more important, what are responsible (and irresponsible) actions to take in the attempt of any individual or group, any victim, perpetrator or bystander (e.g. "good German"). I think the naming and wrestling at many levels with the notion of responsibility and responsible action will be crucial to our work on "reconciliation" and "positive community" next year. Not least will be sorting out what we understand by responsibility.