Dear Readers:
One day someone told me, regarding something we were both present at
“nothing happened because nothing happened to me.”
As unsettling as this comment can be from a fellow human being, it can illustrate quite well normal group functioning.
On a regular basis, groups tend to split and are in great difficulty to create or sustain any kind of empathy. But groups can also develop mechanisms to reduce these phenomenons. When a part of a group works on its history, it creates a space, an opportunity for each member of the group to know where the group comes from.
It is an integration process. It allows us to understand what happened to others and how this still shapes what is happening to us today. The past is such an important part of our societies and our life that we often witness internal or external battles to reshape it.
In a personal analysis, it is never a question of changing the past, but to allow oneself to remember it as close as possible as it was experienced, and to reintegrate it.
Grégoire Pierre