International working group for group analysis

The International Working Group for Group Analysis (IAG), based in Bonn, was founded by the psychoanalysts Michael Hayne (Königswinter), Alice Ricciardi (1910–2008) and Josef Shaked (Vienna). All three are or were members of the Group Analytic Society in London.

Alice Ricciardi had inherited a house in Altaussee with a number of suitable rooms and held there first workshops in 1974 and 1975 with SH Foulkes , Lionel Kreeger and Jim Hume . The IAG was founded in 1976, after a few initial difficulties a group of permanent group leaders was established and since then group-analytical self-awareness and advanced training workshops have been held twice a year in Altaussee . These are recognized as training and further education for psychotherapists, doctors and psychologists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The workshops take place every year in the week before Easter and in the first week of October. Important teachers and leaders of the groups were or are Mohammad Ebrahim Ardjomandi , Felix de Mendelssohn , Elizabeth Foulkes , Paul L. Janssen , Eugen Mahler , Dieter Ohlmeier , Margarethe Seidl and Ursula Volz . The daily large group is a distinctive characteristic of the Altaussee workshops and is still led by Josef Shaked after thirty years . Jutta Menschik-Bendele has been the co-leader of the large group with equal rights since autumn 2010 .

There are cooperations with the Frankfurt Psychoanalytical Institute and the ÖAGG, which both count the self-awareness workshops of the IAG in Altaussee on their training curricula.

On the history of the IAG

After the end of the National Socialist dictatorship and the military capitulation, psychotherapy in German-speaking countries was in a desolate state. The only treatment method that was available in the first third of the century through the discoveries of Sigmund Freud was psychoanalysis. However, this was largely destroyed with the beginning of the National Socialist era in Central Europe. Only a few forms of psychoanalysis had survived that presented themselves as "folkish". Almost all Jewish psychoanalysts had been forced to emigrate. One of them, SH Foulkes , tried in England to treat war-traumatized soldiers with the help of group analysis according to Trigant Burrow . British group psychotherapy benefited greatly from social psychological researchers, such as the emigrants Norbert Elias and Kurt Lewin - and von Freud .

He had made social phenomena understandable by deriving them from human hunger for power and the sex drive. According to Freud, those in power always try to secure their benefices for life. In doing so, they try to keep younger people dependent and to largely control or even prevent their love life. But these rebel, break murderous revolts from the fence. Closely gripped by repentance, they often fall into submissive acceptance of power. Religious and state institutions secure power permanently and make themselves visible with effective sanctions.

Foulkes applied the principle of free association, developed by Freud for individual therapies, to the group. This approach was contrary to the tyranny of the National Socialists. German-speaking analysts in the post-war period saw it as inevitable to learn the new method at the new "holy places" of group analysis in the Anglo-Saxon language area.

An important goal of the German-speaking group analysis from its inception was to oppose all authoritarian tendencies. This was achieved in Altaussee through the training of the group leaders in England and the invitation to group leaders from Israel, Norway and Iran who are connected to the Foulkes approach. This resulted in workshops that dealt with different social backgrounds of power, its institutions, its affects - such as envy, jealousy, rebellion and submission. The evasion into self-aggressive or addicting behavior, the flight into physical disturbances or into psychological states of denial of reality and delusional fantasies become, surprisingly enough, also visible in everyday, healthy colleagues.

Now all of this is not just research. In the meantime, research into interpersonal phenomena with their typical disorders has also become an effective treatment method for such disorders. It has also proven that it is precisely by dealing with these processes in person that the best instruction is given for the group therapists to be trained. Self-awareness to learn analytical group therapy is very important in Altaussee. Self-awareness means deep insight into our social relationships and their mechanisms, at the same time a special understanding of how well-known psychological or psychosomatic illnesses arise from relationships and tensions. At the same time, there is an insight into the healing powers of group therapy. In the course of the process, it is the group members themselves who increasingly work therapeutically among themselves.

The result was a training that runs through self-experiment and helps to bridge the gap between therapist and patient.

International connections

Germany

The IAG is the central training center of the Analytical Group Psychotherapy Section in the German Working Group for Group Psychotherapy and Group Dynamics eV (DAGG) and a recognized training institute for the Group Methods Section in Clinic and Practice in the DAGG. The IAG cooperates with a number of training institutes of the German Society for Psychoanalysis, Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Depth Psychology (DGPT) recognized by statutory health insurance associations . Several lecturers are doctors authorized to provide further training.

Austria

The IAG cooperates with the Austrian working group for group psychotherapy and group dynamics and is a state-recognized training institute. The IAG organizes its workshops in cooperation with the LKH University Hospital Graz , GE for clinical psychosomatics, head: Peter Stix , as well as with the University of Klagenfurt , Institute for Psychology, Department of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, head: Jutta Menschik-Bendele .

International

The IAG is a member of the Foulkes-oriented working group for group analytical training institutes (AGIN) and of the European Group Analytic Training Institutions Network (EGATIN). The three founding members are or were all members of the Group Analytic Society (London).

Eastern Europe

Hungarian doctors have received grants for the Altaussee workshops since the first half of the 1980s . Since the fall of the "Iron Curtain", participants from the Ukraine , but also from Bulgaria and Belarus, have been sponsored, who then carry out further training courses based on the Altaussee model in their home countries. In cooperation with the University of Lviv (= Lemberg ) Michael Hayne , Alice Ricciardi , Margarethe Seidl and Josef Shaked conducted workshops in the Ukraine.

structure

The Altaussee workshops are strictly ritual. The daily large group is open to all participants, which is usually 100. Small groups have eleven to twelve participants, each with a leader, co-leader and observer. A total of 50 units of self-awareness in small and large groups are planned, as well as 6 units of theory and supervision each.

In order to acquire the Altaussee Certificate for Group Analysis, a candidate must take part in ten eight-day training units - four times as a participant, three times as an observer and as a co-leader. Within the first four workshops, two presentations and two supervision cases are to be presented, as well as two admissions interviews to be completed.

Publications

Michael Hayne: Basic structures of human groups , findings from self-awareness processes in Altaussee in the light of the four psychologies of psychoanalysis. Pope Science Publishers, Lengerich 1997

Alice Ricciardi-von Platen: The development of group analysis training by the International Working Group for Group Analysis in Altaussee. In: Gfäler, Leutz: group analysis, group dynamics, psychodrama , Mattes-Verlag Heidelberg 2006

Josef Shaked: The history of the large group in Altaussee. In: Gfäler, Leutz: group analysis, group dynamics, psychodrama , Mattes-Verlag Heidelberg 2006

Web links

Homepage of the IAG