Dear IARPP Community,

Early this year, we informed our Collective members that Rajan Gupta (New Zealand) had agreed to join hands with Mitchel Becker (Israel) to take on the meaningful challenge of co-moderating the Collective.

Our Collective currently has 580 members from 37 different countries. What is its primary task? A space, albeit virtual, for us to meet as a large disparate group from across the world.

As we mused on how to revitalize the Collective, the only ‘rule’ we thought would be, taking a page from the ‘father,’ to associate freely, to allow the emergence of a freefloating discussion that touches on the personal and political. But then we thought, would that not be like any other forum or listserv? What makes this collective unique is a shared leaning to explore the unconscious and what it is like to be in relation with others’ unconsciouses, while staying with one’s own unconscious, bringing a Relational Psychoanalytic perspective on contemporary world events that seep into our consciousness, and into our consulting rooms.

No mean feat, given the rapid pace of change, a change that has so often been catastrophic.

So, in reflecting on the impact of larger social/group processes in an increasingly interconnected world, can we further this interest in experiencing and understanding how these processes shape our minds and hearts? To whose suffering do we listen? When do we ‘other,’ and why? What makes it impossible at times to engage in a dialogue of the unconscious? Is it our familial identifications, our early object longings?

In the end, we settled perhaps on a less ambitious and simpler vision of what this collective could be for. Perhaps it can be a space where the unthought thoughts can be seen or spoken … And a space to relate as a large group … guided-moderated, though lightly, with some principles.

While in theory we were/are confident that this above-stated perspective is worthy, in practice the group process has been difficult. On the one hand, the pains and sorrows unfolding on a daily basis are undeniably raw, and yet our members are mostly unheard hidden voices. It seems we are a PTSD Collective, and the atmosphere still lacks the safety paramount to a disclosing of each member’s suffering and worry. We continue to search for a way to allow the Collective to be a “place where we live.” Where we can share the joys and strife of living on this blue planet.

As we look forward to the coming months, the advent of Spring as well as Autumn (down under in NZ), we thought of Dylan’s “A Hard Rain”:

Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it

And intellectual ‘friends-foes’ will find ways to dialogue together.

From NZ and Israel,
Rajan and Mitchel

Rajan Gupta (New Zealand) and Mitchel Becker (Israel), Collective Co-Chairs

Rajan Gupta, MA, M.HSc.
Aukland, New Zealand
Email Rajan Gupta

Mitchel Becker, Ph.D.
Raanana, Israel
Email Mitchel Becker