CRITICA

The multiple crises of contemporary global life demand mobilization within psychoanalytic institutions and organizations to utilize our learning and resources to the benefit of the many. In June 2022, a group of community psychoanalytic practitioners representing various projects across the US and within Colombia began meeting to plan a pre-congress international workshop at the IPA meetings in Cartagena, Colombia. Our goal was to explore the depth and breadth of analytic involvement outside of the traditional consulting room around the globe, hoping to expand the repertoire of community-based psychoanalytic practice and pedagogy. At its heart, the workshop proposal was based on our conviction that psychoanalytic community work is not only sustained but is actually made possible by fostering the community of those doing the work.

The planning group met over zoom for six months and through creative, collaborative interchange an organic process unfolded with each member volunteering to facilitate different aspects of the workshop. The workshop came to fruition in vibrant, hot, alive Cartagena where color and music and seafood and the Caribbean Sea added yet another layer to the complexities of Colombian history.

A primary goal of our two-day pre-congress workshop was to create an international network of analysts and community clinicians interested in and practicing community psychoanalysis. While our planning group felt initial disappointment when we learned that not as many participants registered for the workshop as we had expected (the total was around 25), this feeling quickly gave way to an appreciation for the more intimate connection that the smaller numbers made possible.

The workshop included presentation of projects in Colombia and within the USA, experiential reflections, moderated group discussions and self-study exercises. Participants were able to speak in the language they were most comfortable using, with other group members acting as translators (primarily between English and Spanish). The fully bilingual nature of the workshop slowed the process and enriched the experience as we all listened binocularly to the conversations in two languages. From the initial moments of the group, a sense of vulnerability, connection, emotional depth, and group solidarity was active. All participants seemed ready for a less intellectualized process where the conditions for reveries and heartfelt openness could be brought forward in the group. Initial group introductions took place using a painting as a stimulus for each participant to associate to. This exercise set the tone for aesthetic, creative interplay as all voices were encouraged to enter the room.

The first day included presentations by three Colombian clinicians describing their community psychoanalytic projects. Using photographs and images, they began with a description of the setting — the context, culture, and country where we all were. We heard about the diverse people that constitute Colombia: its geography, history, wars, race/class dynamics, colonialism, guerrilla warfare, cartels, bandits, organized groups, paramilitary groups, and generations of sociopolitical unrest.

The first clinician described her work with indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon basin. She embodied the humility necessary to work within a non-western perspective and to learn from traditional bases of knowledge. In the indigenous communities, the shaman or spiritual leaders are the stewards of the community. Within their philosophical beliefs, there is no distinction between organic body and psychic body. And there is no division between internal and external life. Healing rituals are scheduled according to the ecological calendar where nature and its rhythms are primary.

Another presentation described the aftermath of a landslide in the Andean region of Colombia. The analyst presented a case example of traveling to the site of the landslide destruction with her patient. The patient recounted the terror as she stood on her front porch with her children and “waited for death” as the landslide approached. She lost her mother in the landslide and many community members died as the mud and rocks rolled over homes. The analyst followed the patient on foot as she silently moved through the massive granite boulders pointing out where members of her community once lived. No words could capture the trauma so the story was told primarily through sensations — vision/touch/sound — as the analytic dyad moved through the space, the analyst bearing witness to the horror.

The third presentation highlighted community psychoanalytic work in the Sierra Nevada territory of Colombia. Four diverse indigenous groups cohabitate in these mountains. The project was an intervention to address the trauma to a community caused by a governmentally-built dam that displaced indigenous groups from their homes. The flood from the dam not only displaced the people but also destroyed sacred sites that represented fertility and sexuality. It not only perpetrated ecological violence, but also spiritual and sexual violence against the people, assaulting the body of mother earth and the body of the women from that community. From this perspective, corpography is in dialectical union with cartography, reflecting the belief that the collective body is in unison with nature/geography. After the flood, there was a sharp increase in forced marriages and domestic violence within the community. The analyst worked with a multidisciplinary team to build trust with women in the community through reparation and recognition of the trauma. They used dance, music, and joining in with the women’s healing rituals. The work involved respecting the permanent contradiction between the analyst’s perspective and a shamanic world view. This project highlighted the intergenerational tensions between indigenous communities and the state of Colombia.

On the second day, several new conference participants (from Vienna and Peru) showed up for the group. The group acknowledged the disruptive feeling, noticing the instinct to preserve the ethos of the first day and instinctively wanting to reject the new arrivals who felt like “outsiders”. We reflected on the necessity to iteratively disrupt and accommodate, flexibly inviting in any/all those that show interest.

Presentations on this day focused on community psychoanalytic projects in the United States, including a description of PINC’s CPT track where we shared both the track’s structure and model as well as examples from one community project. Another presentation highlighted the Harlem Family Institute’s outreach efforts in New York offering acute trauma response services, the Harlem psychoanalytic renaissance talk series, and discussion groups that bridge the institute and the community. The final presentation described APsaA’s DPE Psychoanalyst in the Community workgroup that over many years has organized bridging courses that bring psychoanalysts and community clinicians together. This group is currently planning a community psychoanalytic hybrid conference in Washington DC on March 16 and 17, 2024. To build the network of providers, we created a Whatsapp group to enable on-going collaborations. Following the workshop, there has been regular activity on the Whatsapp group with participants sharing resources and connections as more international interest grows about this community psychoanalytic network.

The workshop attracted people from many different locations, cultures, and positions, all eager for the potentials for cross-pollination and reciprocal learning. The large and small group inquiry, self-study, and experiential exercises allowed us to model building community within the workshop by “doing community” right there. The feeling of connection and vulnerability had a profound emotional impact on me (and many others). The “vibe” of the workshop was unlike any other psychoanalytic event I have attended, with active, intimate, authentic and emotionally impactful group solidarity. I returned from the conference wanting to bring to life the concept of community in the multiple groups I am involved in here – hoping to propagate the broad, open, humble spirit of the workshop group.

Planning group: Paola Contreras (Boston), Francisco Gonzalez (SF), Camila Gutierrez (Bogotá, Colombia), Jany Keat (Athens, Georgia), Paula Kilger (NYC), Lizbeth Moses (Washington, DC), Rachael Peltz (Berkeley), Silvia Rivera (Bogotá and Sierra Nevada, Colombia), Maria Cecilia Sanchez (Mitú, Colombia), Lee Slome (Oakland)