“From Conflict to Recognition: Cultural Transformation through Group Supervision in Guatemala” (29.8. – 2.9.2011; London)

From Conflict to Recognition: cultural transformation through group supervision in Guatemala from Group Analytic Soc International on Vimeo.

Elisabeth Rohr is Professor for Intercultural Education at the Philipps University, Marburg, Germany. She is a group analyst engaged in profit- and non-profit, national and international organisations. Her main research topics are: Christian Fundamentalism in Latin America; identity conflicts of female, adolescent migrants in Germany; female body modifications; and clinical supervision. She has established a group analytic supervision training in Guatemala over the last ten years.

Her paper describes the transformation of a culture of conflict into a culture of recognition in Guatemala. She discusses the challenges involved in developing a group programme in a post-conflict society still divided by deep scars in its social fabric left by the aftermath of war. Groups cater for large numbers of orphans, war-widows, injured and displaced families. Dealing with the horrors of the past through indigenous organisations inevitably replicates some of these divisions in tensions amongst the workers. Supervision of the group workers allows the sharing of anxieties, doubts and differences in a protected space, re-establishing trust and opening perspective for a more constructive way of solving conflicts.

Psychoanalyst Alfred Garwood has written a review of the paper „From Conflict to Recognition: Cultural Transformation through Group Supervision in Guatemala“ at the 15th European Symposium in Group Analysis.

You can read this here: The Challenge of Chairing a Special Symposium Plenary [Garwood, A. (2011): The Challenge of Chairing a Special Symposium Plenary“. – Group-Analytic Contexts 2011/54: 42. London.]