Training in group analysis - view from Czechia

The Czech Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, founded in 1993,was modelled on the EFPP. It adopted its structure - dividing into three sections - individual, group and child, and established the Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (IPP) as its training center. Whilst trainers in the individual section established themselves without any problems because they were able to recruit members or advanced candidates of the Czech Psychoanalytic Society (CPS), the trainers in the group and child sections were challenged to define their specialisation more clearly. Since I. Ruzicková will deal with the training within the child section, I will concentrate on what was going on in the group section.
Lectors in the training comitee of the group section were all people who had gone through a group experience; some of them were trainers in the group trainings (most of them were psychoanalysts or advanced candidates of psychoanalysis in CPS). It needs to be stressed that although the group psychotherapy in the former Czechoslovakia was rather well developed and often used, it couldn't be regarded as psychoanalytic group psychotherapy.
Partly because in the former regime anything connected with psychoanalysis was unwanted, partly because the prevailing orientation in which all group psychotherapists were trained, was eclectic. There was a specifically Czech form of community training which included elements of dynamic and depth psychology but at the same time was a mixture of more interpersonal approaches, non-verbal techniques, art therapeutic and relaxation methods etc. Nevertheless meetings of these eclectic therapeutic (training) communities did not prevent them from becoming so-called "islands of positive deviation". It characterized the community of people who tried, at least among themselves to keep a plural and democratic culture in opposition to the dominant totalitarian reality in society.
As soon as the political and the social changes after 1989 made it possible to establish contacts with Western Europe it became evident that the not even an eclectic approach to group psychotherapy would meet the standards of group analytic psychotherapy practiced in the West. A group of people with individual psychoanalytic experience (who also wanted to work with group) started to search for ways to develop their psychoanalytic foundations in their group work more intensively.
We were lucky and after a couple of introductory contacts mainly with the London Group Analytic Society (GAS) we got the opportunity to gain experience in group analysis. At that time a group analysis trainer from the Institute of Group Analysis (IGA) Copenhagen, Marie-Ange Wagtmann was in Prague for an extended period in connection with her husband's diplomatic mission. The whole training team of CSPAP group section thus became a group, which started to go through their own three-year personal experience.
While at first it wasn't quite clear whether the other parts of regular training (theory and supervision) would follow the group experience it became possible to think about official training guaranteed by IGA Copenhagen once M.-A.Wagtmann consulted her activity with the official IGA representatives. Development was gradual. As well as being part of the group process separate meetings of both parties (trainers from IGA and group members from Czech republic) tried at the same time to clarify the many problematic question which arose. It was not easy.
To begin with our trainers from the IGA Copenhagen were probably testing our commitment to training in group analysis i.e. our personal involvement and openness necessary for a meaningful, personal experience and our willingness to take the role of a "patient" again , who is "cured" in the group. Considering both our age (35-60 years) at the point of entering the group and the professional positions of majority of participants (in positions of leadership in psychotherapeutic societies or psychotherapeutic workplaces) it was not easy at all. Moreover the group was confronted with multilevel fusion of roles, superior-subordinate relations, official or unofficial power status of each of the members, that is dependencies of various kinds.This led inter alia to a strengthening of many individual defences, to an increase of group resistance phenomena and having to work through an impasse in the training process. The fact, that training was conducted in English, a language not native to any of us (neither trainers, nor candidates), would provide sufficient material for a separate paper.
From our side -the participants in the training - we came with a mixture of various feeling and attitudes to our trainers and their institution. On the one hand we were happy to be in direct contact with contemporary developments of European psychotherapy and felt honoured that our group was to have the opportunity to be part of that process. Perhaps being in a position to make up for the missed opportunities of the past. In the process of group analysis it is possible to make connections both between small group (whether primary group represented by each member's personal history, or as in our case, a group going through the training process) and the large group process in or with society as a whole. This gave us a "heady" feeling that we were working not only on our professional growth but that we were also participating in something important for the whole of society.
On the other hand, within the group process but also relatively independently, there grew another feeling, too. Learning, what the group analysis was about, and the way our trainer worked we realised that beside the new and enriching ideas, there were many aspects which were well known for us from our previous practice. Thus it only needed a small step to gain the impression, mainly during the negotiations about a regular training, that we actually didn't need such a demanding and long-term training, that it would have been sufficient to recognize our expertise and our professional position and that we should granted a certificate without further ado and confirmed as group analysts straight away. Perhaps we felt that not only were we personally responsible for the isolation from the West during the years fo totalitarianism but that we even deserved some kind of "preferential" treatment.
This was reflected in the initial negotiating positions - while our supervisors insisted on fulfilling of all the conditions for completing the training -consisting of the required hours of theoretical education and supervision of our work - we wished to negotiate some exceptions. The result of a long process was an agreement and a compromise. Our supervisors, while insisting on their demands helped us to find ways to fulfill them. They delegated the responsibility for the theoretical component of the training to our group (e.g. we set up theoretical seminars ourselves). Furthermore in addition to the regular supervision sessions we were encouraged to introduce simultaneous intervisions (i.e. mutual supervisions of our work, so called peer supervisions). The fact that IGA sponsored the supervisors' work made it possible for our fees for the traning to be adjusted to Czech financial conditions.
Opinions in our group were sharply divided as to whether we should undertake training under such conditions. As a result two members left after completing of the experiential part of the training. The majority (seven people) completed the training after defending their final works. The training was solemnly concluded with the international conference on group analysis organised by the Czech group, which took place in Prague in April of this year. In addition to the representatives of IGA Copenhagen, others also took part. Colleagues from Germany and the Great Britain who were our first teachers who offered occasion workshops and seminars on group analysis in the beginning of 90'. Malcolm Pines from GAP London - the representative of the supervisory institution of our trainers - was also present. (The sumer 2001 issue of the "Revue Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy" is dedicated to papers from that conference.)
I would say that the reality principle won in the end. For our group it would have been unwise not to fulfill all the demands of the training however difficult they were, in fact we would have lost the opportunity to become equal partners with our Western colleagues. By doing so we ensured our place as competent professionals for the future and our supervisors by not relinquishing their demands but making certain adaptations could - hopefully with pride - look at us, their final piece of work, as at grown up and separated "children".
What kind of knowledge from this seven-year process can we bring to our conference "East-West"? Possibly our experience with the training is quite similar to other trainings led by western trainers with eastern colleagues. I suspect that the phases, which I describe in our negotiations with colleagues from the IGA, would be likely to follow a similar pattern.
At first joy, even enthusiasm, that it will be I, who will be honored with the favors of an "older sibling " (or maybe even transferentially of "father" or "mother"?) and I will get something of which I was robbed earlier in my life of. It's not difficult to imagine how seductive it can be for our unconscious desires to have such a massive experience of reparation…
Later on ( by the disposed people already at the start) when getting to know the trainer better greater or smaller disappointment came, after all he/she's not so "marvelous" perhaps even the opposite - "mistaking". Mainly though he/she doesn't automatically confirm my current value, on the contrary he expects further work on myself. It is not difficult to imagine how attractive it can be to invest such a "usurper" ("oedipal father"?) with various unconscious characteristics and perhaps to desire to over throw him, or at least to devaluate him.
It seems though, that this situation has a solution, as well. It can be achieved provided the teacher has a sufficiently sensitive and non-superior approach - and wants to pass on the professional erudition and experience to those who are willing and prepared to accept it. However they must step back from their need to have their worth assessed according to their current profesionality, to allow "regression in the service of the ego" and not to insist on - an actually perverse - claim for abolish all "generation" gaps, in this case between the trainer and the candidate.
Figuratively speaking, by making contact between the "East" and the "West" it is possible to meet in the "Middle". It is pleasant to pronounce it here - in Prague, often referred to as a city lying somewhere between the East and the West, in the heart of the central Europe.

7.10.2001 Ludek Vrba

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