Transgenerational Trauma and Forgiveness

Abstract

This article is about how group analytic thinking can be applied outside the consulting room. I show how it can provide tools to analyse unconscious processes in society by examining a group of Israeli and Palestinian families who come together to reconcile a polarity. The group is called the Bereaved Families Forum (BFF)—made up of around 500 families—who provide a discourse around reconciliation. Their collaboration is to work for peace after losing a family member, usually a child, in the conflict. I demonstrate through excerpts from interviews how group analytic concepts can be applied in the much wider context of the BFF within the Israel–Palestine struggle as a way of understanding a process of reconciliation and forgiveness. I look at how a meeting in a Palestinian’s home is a living example of group analysis as Israelis and Palestinians acknowledge the suffering of the Other which permits participants to withdraw their projected hatred, come to terms with their undigested experiences and mourn their losses, as a platform for reconciliation.