The Impact of the Post-Totalitarian Social Context on the Group Matrix

Abstract

The analytic group matrix, while mirroring the post-War, post-Communist and post-totalitarian context, offers an opportunity for the mourning process, but also for creating the new. In the struggle between the completely lost hope and the effort of finding any hope, it can be a place for finding the germs of hope through the empathic human exchange. For two decades the author has followed the impact of the social field on the dynamics of analytic groups in Belgrade (small, median and large, institutional and private settings) during the difficult socio-political period of totalitarianism, war and bombing, disintegration of Yugoslavia, revolution and the periods after. In this article she focuses on the specific aspects of the social mirroring in her groups during the actual post-totalitarian period.