“When Are We Ever at Home?”—My Path into the Social Field

Abstract

The title of this piece is inspired by Barbara Cassin’s book, Nostalgia: When Are We Ever a Home? I have lived in Greece for 26 years by now. Here, I learned to look for the origin of words (in ancient Greek) to discover their meaning. The word social/society in Greek, κοινωνία, means connecting, being part of a larger group, communicating, and active involvement. Is it not very “Gestalt” already? Connecting, communicating, being involved, and being an active part of a changing organism. The Gestalt approach has taught me that change comes through connection and awareness. It has also taught me that small changes can lead to bigger ones. I did not plan to work with social change, or I was not aware of it. It just happened. Was it influenced by my personal history?I was born near the western border of Poland; my mother was German before WWII and became a Polish citizen in the years that followed. One of my grandfathers died in Auschwitz, and the other went missing while serving in Luftwaffe. I was living between polarities never named, and identities not defined. I grew up moving a lot; I was never a refugee, but I certainly was (and still am) a migrant. I lived in Poland, Italy, Germany, the United States, and now, the longest, Greece. The question, “Where are you from?” is never easy for me to answer. I guess working with people who are misplaced touches me somewhere beyond awareness. So does the word “home”—not as a place, but as a cluster of feelings at the core of my identity. Every time I moved, I had to adjust to new places, smells, behaviors, languages . . . I kept trying to belong.When martial law was imposed in Poland, I was 17. I was an active member of a sociopolitical scout’s movement: we supported students on strike, distributed free press. It was dangerous and challenging. There was an atmosphere, maybe never named nor explained (Francesetti and Griffero, eds. 2019), but shared. I still cherish friendships from those days today. These were my beginnings of social change.Later on, trying to fit into a new culture in Greece I volunteered at Doctors of the World, where I met my first Gestalt therapist. We drove to Belgrade in 1997 to deliver medication.Training in Gestalt methods followed, and this approach, which became more like a life philosophy, has influenced me deeply. Still, my dream was to work in private practice. It felt important, privileged, and yet missing something.I was asked to join an NGO working in detention centers near Athens. I learned to appreciate the “here and now” as the only possible approach there, since I often met the detainee only once. Later, while working with migrants, in conditions not meeting their basic needs, I witnessed the power of creative adjustment and of simple (while not simple at all) human presence. My “weakness” (being the foreigner) slowly became my strength. Work was tough. I had difficulties coping. There were moments I just felt ashamed for being “human.”I started looking for support, focusing on therapists with similar interests and troubled by the same themes that troubled Marien González Hidalgo (2019), a Gestalt therapist conducting research in Mexico before knowing of “a vibrant debate about the social and political role of Gestalt therapy in some circles” (199). I attended a workshop led by members of the Human Rights and Social Responsibility Committee of the European Association of Gestalt Therapy (EAGT) in Krakow. The therapists I met listened with interest, trusted my judgment, supported my ideas, and kept in touch. There was “this atmosphere,” similar to what I perceived while organizing summer camps for the children of detainees in Poland in 1982.Voluntary work today is intense, demanding, and touching. With my colleagues, we share common values and important moments. We speak the same Gestalt language. We are friends. This is Home: “the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in” (Frost 1915, 20).