Empathic Repair
I am involved in a research collaboration with partners based in Department of Psychotherapeutic Medicine and Psychotherapy at the University of Cologne and a scientific team of representatives from the Psychotherapeutic Study Group of Persons Affected by the Holocaust (with the German acronym PAKH).
PAKH is a group of “second generation” psychoanalysts who are adult children of Holocaust survivors and descendants of Nazi perpetrators. Our collaborative research focuses on the phenomenological study of emotions, empathy and what the process of being moved entails.
Our first Research Meeting was held in Dusseldorf at the headquarters of PAKH on 1-4 May, 2008. Video tapes of forgiveness and non-forgiveness situations drawn from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were shown to the group. We then engaged in an analysis of both what we were witnessing in the videos and our own emotional responses to it. This phenomenological approach was a very powerful way of deepening understanding of what it means to be moved, and what it means to have the openness and readiness to be moved by compassion for another person’s pain.
Pumla speaking at Wurzburg, 10 May 2008: "Of Victims and Perpetrators: Empathic Repair - Witnessing Ubuntu"
Dusseldorf Research Meeting in Photos:
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Johannes Pfafflin (with back to viewer) |
Birgit Napiontek, Bernd Sonntag, |
Peter Pogany-Wnendt, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela |
Peter Pogany-Wnendt, Johannes Pfafflin (Chairman of PAKH), Beata Hammerrich |
Pumla, Erda Siebert, Birgit Napiontek |
Bernd Sonntag setting up video. |
Pumla, Bernd Sonntag, Erda Siebert |
Interrupted work: Tea time … |
End of the day drinks … |
Down time … |
Night out after a long day’s work: |
Pumla with research group and their spouses on Opera Night |
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