To stand sitting!

Reflections on weaving our living stories — the NZAP conference in Napier

Abstract

This paper was written as a way of making sense of my experience as the conductor of the large group. In taking on this role I assume that I am expected to pay attention to all communications including receiving and digesting those that are not yet consciously acknowledged. The hope is that by taking this position, unacknowledged painful material can be contained until the group is ready to receive it in a less toxic form just as Winnicott described the 'good- enough' mother providing for her baby. Timing is essential to the process so is an ongoing relationship. In the large group the intention is that most people will eventually grasp the 'social soup' (Solomon, 2006, p. 56.) that unconsciously restricts and influences their lives.

In this conference the large group was a central experience and touched some deep and painful places. The aim was to provide an opportunity to weave our living stories together as a way of encountering our bicultural history together. As the time we had was so short, I found it difficult to make sense of what was happening there and then. Consequently it became almost imperative for me to find a way of understanding the experience afterwards. The more I thought and worked with the material, the clearer it became to me that this large group appeared to manifest aspects of the shameful colonial history of Aotearoa New Zealand. What emerged from what was said and enacted gave some clues about what Volkan has called 'the chosen trauma'. Strong feelings connected to what Māori 'thought they gave and what the coloniser claimed' has been unconsciously transmitted through the generations as a result of this original 'abyss' (Walker, 1990, p. 96) of misunderstandings inextricably linked to the Treaty of Waitangi.

As I describe this process, I introduce some theoretical ideas about projective identification and its role in transmitting trauma across the generations through the social unconscious, the role of the conductor in group-analytic large groups, scapegoating and some thoughts about our journey towards a more authentic bicultural position in NZAP. I am very aware that my role as both an outsider, coming from the UK, and an insider, having grown up in New Zealand as an immigrant, places me in a unique position symbolically. Throughout the paper I refer to myself as the 'Representative of the Crown'. In this symbolic role, I was enabled to take in three different experiences, how it feels to be an immigrant now, how it feels to be a colonised people in your own land and how it feels to be a descendent of those original colonising invaders. What emerged felt unspeakably painful so I hope this paper can be read as a step in acknowledging our 'difficult difference' (Wedde 2005).