The seventh issue of the magazine Systemic thinking and psychotherapy refers to the concept of meeting, sometimes as a target and sometimes as a goal, or to the consequences of its lack.
In the second part of the article "Phases of System Development in Organizational Work Groups: The Systems- Centered Approach for Intervening in Context“ of Susan P. Gantt and Yvonne M. Agazarian, translated by Nikos Marketos, the emphasis is on an organization’s capacity to develop and change through its ability to distinguish and incorporate information from both within and outside the system. According to this approach, meeting and communication between sub-groups and the wider framework of the system as a whole affects the development of the system, enhances productivity and growth of the working group and increases the capacity for emotional intelligence in the various working contexts.
In the next article of Kia Thanopoulou, "Shame, Trauma and Reflection: Looking for a Safe Place", the theme of the meeting emerges in the therapeutic context. According to the author, 'psychotherapy (…) is an intersubjective meeting through which the therapist aims to create a transitional, safe in-between space that will allow the patient to explore and process aspects of his experience, that trauma kept disconnected and without meaning, so that he achieves integration and cohesion".
The next article by Vassiliki Fenekou and Eugenie Georgaka is entitled "Making sense and coping with voices through the use of Romme and Escher’s therapeutic model: A clinical case study". It outlines a psychotherapeutic intervention which aims to decode the meaning of the voices and their connection with the personal history of the individual. The individual’s awareness of the meeting point of relationships with significant others, significant life events and the experience of hearing voices, helps him to decode the meaning of these voices and their association with aspects of himself.
The meeting of intrapsychic, intersubjective and social within the large group is the subject of the next article, "The Large Group. A living experience" by Dora Skali. The article discusses the relationships and the interaction of the "here and now", within the "large group" as a field of study "per se".
In the article "The resonance phenomenon: When the therapist and the user of mental health services interact with the occasion of their ‘Lestrygonians and Cyclops’" Nikos Kaldirimitzian refers to the meeting of elements from the therapeutic system as they emerge from the mutual structure of reality. As stated in the article, these elements seem to come into resonance in exactly the same way that physical bodies can go into vibration if found on the same frequency.
The last and very interesting article in this issue is "The multiple facets of crisis" by Irini Tsanira. This article states inter alia that a way one can understand the crisis of Western societies —and of course the Greek crisis— is as dissociation, as modern man’s inability to perceive himself as a member of society. As the article characteristically puts it, "Contemporary human beings act as if they merely put up with society and do not attempt to reform it, as if it did not concern them".
This issue ends with the presentation of the book of Sotiris Manolopoulos Roads of Adolescence by Dimitris Kokkalis. According to him, in this book "Adolescence is defined as the place of transition, repetition, regurgitation, integration and ultimately the creation of the 'new' more coherent, meaningful "adult" self ". At the same time questions are raised about the possibility of meeting between systemic and psychoanalytic language, about the roles of teacher-student, treated-therapist, parent-adolescent and finally about the possibility of meeting with sides of ourselves”.
The editing committee