A Proposal to the Koerber Stiftung

Aim
A European Institute or training program will be established in Hamburg, at the Koerber Foundation for European English speaking practitioners in the helping professions (teachers, social and community workers, therapists, nurses, decision makers in these fields) to learn skills how to use personal stories to bring people into dialogue, especially across ethnic, religious and cultural dividing lines, and how to develop research methods that will enable practitioners to reflect on their work and generalize from it.

This is a learning process, aimed to create a cadre of practitioners and researchers in Europe, based on thirty years of experience of Prof. Bar-On and his students in the German-Jewish aftermath of the Holocaust and in the Palestinian –Israeli conflict, and his work with the TRT (To Reflect and Trust) group that included also practitioners from Northern Ireland and South Africa. It will be a three-year program, based on bi-annual short seminars in Geneva and their implementation in the home-setting of the participants, supervised by Prof. Bar-On. The documentation and evaluation of the program will include in depth interviews with the participants, observation of their interventions in their home settings, questionnaires (before and after) and comparison to alternative interventions in this field.

Theoretical Background
Since the end of the Cold War and the relatively successful process of peacefully ending the Apartheid regime in South Africa, implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there is a growing awareness and interest to end intractable conflicts in different parts of the world by combining top-down peace agreements with a bottom up social and educational reconciliatory process, (Rothstein, 1999; Saunders, 1999; Kriesberg, 1998; Lederach, 1998; Bar-Tal, 2000; Coleman, 2003).

Today, it is widely accepted that without such a bottom-up complementary process, there is a real danger that the top-down peace agreement or accord will not become sustainable and violent outbreaks might follow. Though it is generally believed that new common economic and political interests will outweigh the animosity and build bridges across previous divisive lines, this did not happen many times in reality (Bar-Siman-Tov, 2003).

Within a bottom-up reconciliatory process, several issues have to be addressed simultaneously: specifically, unresolved issues regarding the perpetrators and victims of the conflict. One could deliberate if the perpetrators should be brought to trial and punished (like in the Nuremberg trials or the current tribunal in de Haag) or if they should confess and be provided amnesty like in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). One has to relate to the victims as well: How should the victims, who lost their dear ones, be compensated? Who will address their on-going plight, stemming from the conflict or from before its violent outbreak?

These aspects have been dealt with mostly as legal issues of the aftermath of the conflict. But reconciliation has a psychosocial component as well (Bar-Siman-Tov, 2003). The concept of reconciliation assumes that the enemies of yesterday will give up and let go of their pain, hatred, animosity and wish for revenge, and will reconstruct their identity that had been constructed around the conflict. One expects that a new identity construction will develop together with new relationships between former enemies that will address the roots of the conflict, not only its unfortunate outcomes. But how can we create such a deep change in people who were committed to the conflict, in some places for generations, in others for a substantial part of their lives? Are these expectations realistic or is it wishful thinking and talking that has little substance in intractable conflicts (Ignatieff, 1999)? Basically, a psychodynamic approach is necessary to tackle some of the underlying issues, if one wants to reach a sustainable peace agreement (Volkan, 1991). According to this approach, one has to work-through the past, before new energy will be available to make these difficult changes in the identity constructed around the conflict together with openness and willingness to enter a dialogue with the enemy of yesterday.

Bar-On developed over thirty years a historically and socially contextualized psychodynamic approach to work on these complex issues, in relation to the Holocaust (with Jews and Germans) and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He started in the mid-seventieth conducting therapy and research with families of Holocaust survivors (Bar-On, 1995a). Through his work with students at the university and their interviews with Holocaust survivors and their descendants he and others recognized the role of "the conspiracy of silence" that prevented their working through of the past: The survivors had subjective reasons not to talk about they had experienced ("Survival guilt") and the society that absorbed them after the war was over was not able or willing to listen to them and help them heal their emotional wounds (Bar-On, 1995; Danieli, 1988).

First step: two three-days seminars in February and June, 2006
A group of 16-20 participants will convene in Hamburg in February 2006 for the first seminar that will focus on personal stories, related to the constructions of one’s own identity, learning to conduct interviews in the biographical tradition, and how to move from the personal story-telling into the dialogue between people and groups divided by long and painful conflict situations. There will be an advantage if participants will come therefore in couples from conflict zones, representing the different sides of the divide, so that they can later use their training to facilitate dialogue in their own context.

During the period between February and June, each participant will conduct and transcribe one interview, related to issues of their own identity construction, as part of their own social context. One should be aware that biographical interviewing is different from therapeutic interviewing, as one is not supposed to help the interviewees but rather learn to systematically gather information from them (though of course these may have therapeutic benefits for both sides). These transcriptions will be delivered to me in English and will serve as the initial material for the second June seminar, which will focus on analysis of the interviews and how to move from the individual interviewing and analysis phases into the dialogue and group phase.

Participation
People who wish to register for these seminars have to commit themselves for at least these two full seminars. The seminars are open to persons who speak English, and have at least 5 years of experience in their professional field (teachers, social workers, therapists, nurses, legal authorities and decision makers in these fields)

There is an intention and option that these two seminars will be followed by four additional ones, over the following two years: In the second year, participants will learn to implement these skills in their own context, and will learn to handle the difficulties of that process and its special contextual features, in a kind of on the job training. The seminars will be devoted to study methods of group facilitation, conflict management, power and status structures, evaluation and documentation. During the third year the students will develop participatory research and strategic intervention skills which will enable them to become multipliers in their own context: Teach others what they have learned over the period of two years. Part of that learning will include a special attention, how to incorporate decision makers in this process in order to bring a better synchrony between top-down and bottom-up efforts.

Participants will have to pay an annual amount of XXX Euro per seminar for their participation, in addition to their travel, meals and lodging expenses. Special subsidies will be provided for potential participants from less privileged areas, who are qualified for this seminar but cannot pay for it, and in whom the Koerber Foundation will have an interest.

People interested to apply for this training program will be asked to send their applications to danbaron@bgu.ac.il , including their CV, their work area (5 years at least of experience required), their interest in this training and where they could apply it in the future, and two recommendations of known authorities in their field. As mentioned earlier, we recommend that people who come from conflict zones will come with a partner from the other side of their context that could help later in the implementation process.

References
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