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Group analysis is particularly concerned with the permeation of the individual by the dynamics of her' social context. In a racist society the dynamics of racism will be internalized by all its members. We should expect this dynamic to emerge in an analytic group and should be prepared to analyse it. An example of the emergence of racism in an analytic group reveals the importance of group composition; the relationship between cultural difference and political and cultural domination; the responsibilities and self-awareness of the group conductor, and the psychodynamics of the victim-persecutor scenario.

Oppression can occur in the family, school workplace and cultural environment, and in the discourses of psychiatry and psychotherapy as well as under overtly repressive political regimes. Therapy with survivors of torture and organized violence is not a special case of therapy in a political context, nor of the need for politicized therapy. It is rather an example where these issues are writ large and where the place of psychotherapy in a general struggle for collective civilization, personal liberation and human rights can be given a particularly sharp focus. Group analysis provides a particularly valuable approach because it recognizes the dialectic between individual and group, and the resonance between different levels of context.

Blackwell: Cultural transition, negation and Social Unconscious 305 Not just politics I have been asked to talk, 'not just about politics'. This is an interesting request, because I never talk just about politics. I believe the personal is political. In the same way that Foulkes talked about the individual being permeated by the social, I believe the political gets inside us and shapes our thoughts, our feelings, our perceptions, our language and our actions, both individually and collectively and I always talk about this. But often the only bit of what I have said that gets remembered is the quote from Marx, or some other comments that can be safely bracketed off as 'political', so they can then be regarded as 'not personal' and nothing to do with the internal world. So I want to suggest that if anyone leaves here, thinking I have only talked about politics, you will have missed half the talk. Problems and solutions This session is set up in a particular way. The topic for the day asks 'How can our groups offer Therapeutic Work with displaced people who have been forced to leave their home, their country and their social contexts, often suffering many different traumas at any one time?' In other words, how do we do therapeutic work with refugees? And note, 'Therapeutic Work' has capital letters. So, it is implicit in this invitation that I should first outline the problems that refugees have, and then explain how group analysis can provide solutions. This is a common psychotherapeutic approach. Someone else has a problem and we have the solution: Diagnosis and treatment. In the triangle of persecutor-victim-rescuer we fall neatly into the rescuer role. We are the good guys! Well, those of you who know me at all well will not be surprised that I am not going to go down that road. Back in the 1960s, there was a slogan: 'If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!' Then it was subverted by an American community activist called Ed Berman, who said, 'Unless you're part of the problem, you cannot be part of the solution!' So I am going to talk, not only about how group analysts can be part of the solution but how we are very much part of the problem. This is a more psychoanalytic approach because it begins with the analysis of the would-be analyst. It is also a more group analytic approach. We often say that group analysis is analysis of the group, by the group, including the conductor. I would like to change that to 'analysis of the group, by the group, starting with the conductor'.

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