Nazareth-Conferences

The Nazareth-Conferences were the beginning of a project of psychoanalysts from England, Israel and Germany, whose founding fathers and mothers intended to contribute to a process of solving conflicts that developed between national groups. The causes of these conflicts were supposed in collective prejudices and resentments. The aim of the conferences was – and still is for the follow-up projects –, to become aware of these prejudices and resentments and – at best – to give them up. Desmond Tutu compared the conferences in his foreword for the English and German edition of the book about the Nazareth-Conferences with the Truth and reconciliation commission set up after the end of Apartheid in South Africa.

There are long paths that individual psychoanalysts and their representative organizations – joined in the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) – had to go until the first of the three conferences under the name Nazareth-Conferences could be held in 1994. The roots go back to the year 1934 when Max Eitingon after his flight from Germany founded the Palestinian, today Israel Psychoanalytic Society. From their ranks came some of the founders of these conferences.

A second line of the story of the project began 1957 in England. There the started to develop the later so-called Leicesterconferences, an “empirical experiment on group relations” – partly with psychoanalytic concepts, partly with those of the “theory of open systems”.

1977 the congress of the IPA for the first time after the war and the period of Nazism was held in Jerusalem. The occurrences at the congress activated in Germany and Israel processes of reflection and discussion that in 1985 should have visible consequences in both countries. In Jerusalem 1977 the German group suffered a grievous experienced rejection of their desire, to hold a next congress in Berlin – also for the first time after the Holocaust –, but made use of this offense for an intensive process of self-reflection. At its beginning there was the insight in the “illusion of an innocent tradition and history”. The result was presented at the 34th congress of the IPA 1985 in Hamburg in an accompanying exhibition that traced the self-reflective process.

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Wikipedia