Nazareth-Conferences

The Nazareth-Conferences were the beginning of a project of psychoanalysts from England, Israel and Germany, whose founding fathers and mothers[1] intended to contribute to a process of solving conflicts that developed between national groups.

Desmond Tutu compared the conferences in his foreword[3] for the English and German edition of the book about the Nazareth-Conferences[4] with the Truth and reconciliation commission set up after the end of Apartheid in South Africa.

[5] There are long paths that individual psychoanalysts and their representative organizations – joined in the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) – had to go until the first of the three conferences under the name Nazareth-Conferences could be held in 1994.

The roots go back to the year 1934 when Max Eitingon after his flight from Germany founded the Palestinian, today Israel Psychoanalytic Society.

The occurrences at the congress activated in Germany and Israel processes of reflection and discussion that in 1985 should have visible consequences in both countries.

In Jerusalem 1977 the German group suffered a grievous experienced rejection of their desire, to hold a next congress in Berlin – also for the first time after the Holocaust –, but made use of this offense for an intensive process of self-reflection.

[13] In the same year in Israel OFEK[14] was founded as a result of striving for self-knowledge after the Jerusalem congress: an organization dedicated to the study of group processes using the Leicesterconferences.

[9] With support and under the direction of Eric Miller from the Tavistock Institute in London own group relation conferences were established with the OFEK in Israel.

The decision to enter into this venture and to start the project fell in the apartment of the couple Moses as Shmuel Erlich, who was there at the time, mentioned.

2007 PCCA[2] was founded – Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities –, a non-profit organization with which the founders of Nazareth-Conferences have given themselves an outward visible structure.

To address this difficult task undisturbed by the everyday life of the participants, the design of conferences[27] presented a secure framework.

The staff's purpose was the management of the conference, he took over the responsibility for the frame, thus securing the boundaries of space, time and task; he presented consultants systematic or if necessary and was called for, and offered working hypotheses about what just happened.

The participants came, as it turned out, not only from Germany and Israel, so that the division of the world in the title appeared as a “fantasy on the part of the planners”.

Pathbreaking work hypothesis was that the unsolvable appearing group conflicts were based on conscious and unconscious attitudes, feelings, response readiness and fantasies, which were often establishing identity and therefore difficult to give up.

Plenary, Review- and Application-Group should help to bring reflexive processes on the way, Small-Study-Group and in particular the System Event provided space for feeling, shaping and experience, therefore encounter with oneself and others.

In an ongoing process the participants in System Event had to come to an agreement about the question who wanted to work with whom, in which room, with or without consultant, on which topic and then to do so.

Wouldn't that mean to separate in a more deep way from parents who, not only in the world of inner objects but often also in real life have to be the space for our own anxiety or wishes for destruction?

During the third conference he had apparently taken on the role of The Eternal Jew: he was carrying a plastic bag with him at all times which contained, among other things, one of his publications which he offered for sale.

Then, and only then, are both (the other and myself) free to choose relationship with one another, or not.”[46] In addition to these and other individual insights, there was on the other hand also a collective result: two books,[4] one in German, one in English, both appeared almost simultaneously and a really common work of all those who wanted to participate.

But the two books have helped to make the project accessible for a wider public and the readers of the personal and often painful experiences of the participants were able to learn firsthand.

2009 was foreseeable that they “will, and must, have a future.”[49] A website was set up and with the PCCA the conferences opened to all interested parties, so that the project could now turn to other national groups in conflict.