Universals of Treatment in Different Cultures. Some Notes on the Problems of Transcultural Group Analytic Training Programmes

In this article I will attempt to bring together some of my own personal experiences of working in training programmes that serve to introduce group analysis—or to give it a firmer methodical and institutional foundation—in different cultures, political and social systems in other parts of the world. The question that often arises in this work is: what universal standards do we wish to uphold, regardless of where and with whom we are working? Where are we prepared to defer to ingrained cultural norms or other social givens than those in which we ourselves as trainers originally received our own training? In my view this is a delicate matter, since the danger on the one hand is of being excessively Eurocentric and taking our own standards as being universally applicable; on the other hand however, an overly multicultural approach—which may seem at first very accommodating to the various different norms that we are confronted with—may end up by depriving our discipline of its social and emancipatory thrust and ultimately merely confirming such local cultural norms rather than questioning them. I would suggest that one of the most valuable aspects of practical group analysis is its tendency to call into question all manner of social and cultural norms, whether related to age, gender, power, money or any other salient factor that structures social relationships.