Reflections from the EGATIN Study Days 2025 in Berlin, where the focus was on working with polarisation in our groups and in group-analytic training: a rich exchange with colleagues across the international group-analytic community.
Read the full post on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/d_PC_rnC
What EGATIN is, and why the Study Days matter
EGATIN, the European Group Analytic Training Institutions Network, brings together the institutes responsible for training group analysts across Europe. Its annual Study Days are less a conventional conference than a working meeting: training staff, supervisors and candidates sit together to examine how group analysis is taught, how trainees are assessed, and how the method holds up against the pressures of contemporary clinical practice.
Working with polarisation in the group
Choosing polarisation as the 2025 theme was pointed. Group analysis has always treated the small group as a microcosm of the society around it, which means the splits running through public life (political, generational, cultural) do not politely stay outside the room. They surface in who gets scapegoated, in which subjects the group quietly agrees never to raise, and in the pressure on the conductor to take a side. Training institutions are not exempt: the same dynamics appear between staff and candidates.
For a practice in Ho Chi Minh City this has very practical consequences. Groups here often mix Vietnamese and international members, several first languages, and quite different assumptions about family obligation, hierarchy and privacy. Much of the work is keeping that difference thinkable rather than explosive, allowing disagreement to stay in the room long enough to be understood instead of hardening into camps.
I am a clinical psychologist based in Ho Chi Minh City, trained in group analysis. You can read more about my background, or about the therapy group I run in Saigon.