Mind Moves: This past week I responded to a novel and challenging invitation to teach a two-day workshop on group therapy in Poland. The audience was a group of 35 practising psychologists at the centre for Cognitive Therapy Poland, completing a psychotherapy course run under the auspices of Oxford University.
The majority work in Warsaw, where the workshop was held. The participants included practitioners from adult, child and family, mental health services and some from general medical clinics. Many supplemented the modest income their day jobs generated by working for human resource and recruitment organisations. The expressed goal for a majority of them was to form group practices that would operate on a private basis, providing affordable psychotherapy to those who needed it.
The invitation was prompted by the fact that a key feature of our work as a department of psychology in St James's Hospital is the provision of group therapy for patients at different stages of their involvement with our service. For those acutely ill patients who are recently admitted, we meet weekly on the ward and provide an opportunity for them to talk together about their experience of being "patients"; for those attending as out-patients, we offer more intensive group courses for dealing with specific difficulties like depression, anxiety and low self-esteem; and for those who have graduated from individual or group-based treatments, we offer a new mindfulness-based approach to relapse prevention.
Group therapy offers a unique opportunity to reduce fear of other people, receive honest feedback and learn constructively from others who share the same struggles.
This work in St James's prompted the invitation to Poland where I distilled what expertise we had collectively developed in our small department to a warm and welcoming group of people with a great sense of fun. The usual challenge of teaching was compounded by the fact that everything I said was mediated to the group via a translator. In fact, three translators were assigned to me for the weekend and they worked as a relay team passing the linguistic baton, one to the other, as I successively wore each of them down with complex sentence structures.
For a group of people to sit through a full weekend of psychotherapy theory and practice, after a full working week, struck me as impressive. Their motivation to learn was palpable and their questions were focused and practical.
Psychotherapy is a very scarce and underdeveloped aspect of their mental health service which, until very recently, has relied solely on institutional care and medical treatments. Communism viewed it with suspicion as expressive of a western philosophy that was at variance with a socialist ideology. The principals of interpersonal group therapy appealed particularly to this audience as they resonated with their own deep concerns for achieving liberation through establishing bonds of connection with one another.
We worked hard on this workshop but I confess that I found teaching this group, through translators, to be tough going at the end of day one. I was unsure how to read their feedback and felt downhearted the next morning as I walked through the streets of Poland to deliver day two.
I was uncertain as to the relevance of the content to their particular needs. There comes a point in any teaching enterprise when you face a choice of moving towards your audience in a challenging way or simply delivering a prepared class and hoping for the best. I rallied my flagging self-confidence and took the risk of creating an actual experience of what I was trying to teach theoretically.
Drawing them into a series of small group exercises, I encouraged them to be open with one another about their experiences of clinical work. This led to a level of sharing throughout the group that was energised and very new for them. A sense of immediacy took hold as they explored their own fears and inadequacies.
Theory came to life as they identified both their misconceptions about each other and the positive benefits they had experienced being together over the past 18 months. A bond of affection was formed between us all and it was hard to say goodbye at the end of the two days.
The Poles are a proud, passionate and resilient people. In 1944, Warsaw, a one-million strong metropolis at the very heart of Europe, ceased to exist. It was reduced to a desert of rubble by swirling fires that burned for three months.
By August of that year, some 300,000 inhabitants were killed in street executions and death camps. Its meticulous restoration is an extraordinary testament to the doggedness of the human spirit that refuses to be broken.
Ireland is widely portrayed throughout Poland as a shining example of the benefits of EU membership. I was asked several times about how we regard their forthcoming inclusion in the community, whether we welcome or resent them. It struck me how alike we are in character to the Poles in many respects and how fortunate we will be to build a close alliance with a people who have never given up on themselves.
• Dr Tony Bates is a principal clinical psychologist at St James's Hospital and course director of the MSc in cognitive psychotherapy at TCD.