Passion, containment, and commitment-essential elements of groups across the lifespan in Bruce Springsteen's work

The group, with its intensity, interaction, roles and dynamics, is an important unit of experience in everyday life, in psychotherapy groups, and in Bruce Springsteen's music. This paper explores experiences of and ideas about real life groups throughout the lifecycle through Springsteen's music, framed in concepts from a broad group literature including clinical psychology, social psychology, group psychotherapy, sociology, anthropology, and organizational psychology. The lifecycle includes adolescence and the role of the group to contain all its passions; the work world with its excitements and disillusionments; encounters with loss, and the holding power of the group; experiences of dissolution of the group, and possibilities for recommitment; and the passion and support of the group during celebrations. Themes of passion, containment, and commitment weave throughout the narrative.

The place of race and racism in cultural competence: what can we learn from the English experience about the narratives of evidence and argument?

This paper outlines the history of workforce strategies for providing mental health care to "black and ethnic minorities" in England. Universal mental health policies failed to deliver equity in care, and thus specific policies were launched to address ethnic inequalities in care experiences and outcomes. The emphasis on race equality rather than cultural complexity led to widespread acceptance of the need for change. The policy implementation was delivered in accord with multiple regional and national narratives of how to reduce inequalities. As changes in clinical practice and services were encouraged, resistance emerged in various forms from clinicians and policy leaders. In the absence of commitment and then dispute about forms of evidence, divergent policy and clinical narratives fuelled a shift of attention away from services to silence issues of race equality. The process itself represents a defence against the pain of acknowledging systemic inequities whilst rebutting perceived criticism. We draw on historical, psychoanalytic, and learning theory in order to understand these processes and the multiple narratives that compete for dominance. The place of race, ethnicity, and culture in history and their representation in unconscious and conscious thought are investigated to reveal why cultural competence training is not simply an educational intervention. Tackling inequities requires personal development and the emergence and containment of primitive anxieties, hostilities, and fears. In this paper we describe the experience in England of moving from narratives of cultural sensitivity and cultural competence, to race equality and cultural capability, and ultimately to cultural consultation as a process. Given the need to apprehend narratives in care practice, especially at times of disputed evidence, cultural consultation processes may be an appropriate paradigm to address intersectional inequalities.

When Suffering Begets Suffering

Inter-group competitive victimhood (CV) describes the efforts of members of groups involved in violent conflicts to establish that their group has suffered more than their adversarial group. Such efforts contribute to conflicts’ escalation and impede their peaceful resolution. CV stems from groups’ general tendency to compete with each other, along with the deep sense of victimization resulting from conflicts. The authors point to biases that contribute to groups’ engagement in CV, describe five dimensions of victimhood over which groups may compete, and contend that such competition serves various functions that contribute to the maintenance of conflicts. Drawing on the Needs-Based Model, they suggest that CV may reflect groups’ motivations to restore power or moral acceptance. They then review evidence of the negative consequences of CV for inter-group forgiveness and suggest potential strategies to reduce CV. Finally, the authors discuss potential moderators and directions for future research.

The struggle for wholeness: addressing individual and collective trauma in violence-ridden societies

The present article begins with an overview of how staff at the Center for Dialogue and Human Wellbeing (CDBH)-at Tecnológico de Monterrey University in Chihuahua, México-approach the process of conflict transformation. Specifically, it focuses on CDBH's strategies for dealing with historical injury, as well as the individual and collective trauma existing between and among communities engaged in ongoing conflict. It proceeds to examine how traumatic memories are stored in the mind/brain, and how trauma can impact on individuals and communities locked into a cycle of violence. The ensuing section provides an overview of the debate and the literature concerning psychotherapeutic and holistic-kinesthetic approaches for addressing individual and collective trauma. A hypothetical workshop is then offered to give readers a clear idea of how trauma work is actually carried out. The article ends by asking what approaches can best be applied for transforming collective trauma into sacred memories, which can become the driving force for a continuing commitment to building and sustaining peace among segments of communities that had previously been in conflict with one another.

Falling Man: encounters with catastrophic change

The assault on the twin towers thrust Americans into an encounter with catastrophic change. Previously protected by the illusion of security fed by our relative imperviousness to others' points of view, we are harshly awakened to our defensive blindness. This rupture helps us see the particular beyond the seeming universality, locating culture as a variable frame defining meanings through the narratives that hold complexities of human experience in conceptual space. Don DeLillo's Falling Man offers a reading of catastrophe as a forced encounter with fallibility, breaking apart illusions of sameness and difference, towards integration of what trauma excludes from awareness.

Truth and reconciliation commissions: problems in transitional justice and the reconstruction of identity

This article considers some of the main features of so-called truth and reconciliation commissions, their history and structure and their characteristic concerns with respect to their central dilemmas, including: how they grapple with notions of truth, justice, liability, reconciliation, apology and forgiveness, and how they address the need to support the "reconstruction" of selves and identities in the wake of massive trauma and collective violence. A particular concern is with how such commissions or related tribunals engender what can be called a "one-to-many" dynamic, in which they try to effect social reconciliation while focusing attention, via testimony and story-telling, on the traumas and suffering of individual victims.

Peace Talk: a relational approach to group negotiation among Arab and Israeli youths

In response to conflict in the Middle East, a group intervention for Arab and Jewish youths has been developed to promote communication and healing. Using ethnographic observations of this relational, group-based program, this study examines the complexities involved in peace negotiation group work. There was evidence that although this program is met with real-life challenges and oppositional forces, such as genuine danger in negotiation between Arabs and Jews, the program showed success in encouraging otherwise untenable communication. Using this program as a starting point, this study engages the wider issue of the inherent difficulties faced by interventions that pursue mutual empathy, empowerment, and conflict tolerance between individuals and groups that are historically and politically at odds.

Witnessing the effects of political violence in families: mechanisms of intergenerational transmission and clinical interventions

In this era of globalization, when news about political violence can haunt anyone, anywhere, those whose families have suffered political violence in the past are particularly vulnerable to current distress. Skilled in understanding transgenerational processes, family therapists need to be familiar with the mechanisms by which children are exposed to the effects of political violence suffered by their elders-that is, the ways in which they become their witnesses. This article presents a framework for understanding how the trauma of political violence experienced in one generation can "pass" to another that did not directly experience it, and proposes a model to guide clinical intervention.