Group Analysis, Transculturality and Ethics

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The foundation matrix described by Foulkes embodies values, standards and myths of each culture as well as our common biological characteristics. The workshops of the European Association for Transcultural Group Analysis have revealed how much of this matrix is unconscious, taken for granted, until we are confronted by people of another culture or have to move from one culture to another. Such a move is often traumatic. The abuse of difference is integral to historical tragedy and trauma, but a move from paranoid destructiveness to depressive reparation is possible in favourable circumstances.Primitive morality is contrasted with more mature ethics. In the microsphere the basis of a sense of justice and fairness is traced to the nursing couple and the early family. In the macrosphere its socio‐cultural base is seen to be manifested in family rules and laws of inheritance. Maturity involves the appreciation of and transcending of differences and different interests. It is proposed that the psychoanalytic concept of ‘genitality’ offers a paradigm for transculturality.

This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit: