Making ourselves understood: Translation as a creative task

Abstract

Human evolution in groups has given us language. But it has also led to a present where it appears increasingly difficult to understand each other. Language can be used to clarify or to obscure; it can unite or separate. It is as if we speak different languages. (This is written in English as my own second language as a German.) Can thinking about actual linguistic differences help? A foreign language can be a barrier to communication—and learning or translating the language can become a bridge. Similarly, on a personal level (and in psychotherapy), a second language can be used defensively, when it creates a distance to the internal world—and it can be used creatively to rethink it. Group analysis in particular is faced with this dual potential, when members do not all share the same background. Foulkes himself had to struggle with the English language, and (I suggest) turned the challenge into an opportunity for creative new ideas. Foulkes’s concept of translation embodies this creativity and carries it into the group-analytic model. This specific Foulkesian translation originates in the group-analytic situation and goes beyond the polarity of the passively translated and the active translator. The mutual task is unavoidable in our polyphonic international group of GASi.