Community development und Psychotherapie in Randschichtgettos
Authors: Horst-Eberhard Richter
Journal: Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (1974)

Representative statistics clearly show that symptoms of psychiatric disturbances occur more frequently in lower and very low class families than in middle class families. To the same degree, the chance for a psycho therapeutic care decreases. Up till now the slum population has had practically no offer of psychotherapy. The slum population in the FRG count about 800,000 people (so-called 'house-less'), mostly belonging to poor families with many children – living in primitive lodgings in the slums of industrial towns in ghetto-like isolation. The slum subculture and certain typical psychosocial disturbances seem to depend upon each other reciprocally. Studies have shown that the causes of the excommunication of these socially weak groups, and their developing ghettos, are sociopolitical mechanisms which must be clarified from both political, economical and psychosocial points of view. In the FRG, action groups have emerged during the last years, that go into these slum ghettos to give the inhabitants and children various kinds of support. Indeed, these action groups make a crucial point of shaking authorities, political organizations and the public, to bring about consciousness of the fatal interaction between the excommunicating forces of society and the excommunicated people of the slum ghettos. Due to such action groups, psychotherapists are given a chance to study the life conditions and the hitherto sparsely investigated psychiatric disturbances of this social group. One may also discover constructive approaches in order to develop techniques of adequate therapeutic activities. This paper describes a project in which psychoanalysts collaborate with action groups – mainly students – who concern themselves with the problems of a slum group of 120 families and 400 children. In continuous agreement with the action group, the psychoanalysts count the following among their tasks: (1) Direct crisis intervention and a few long-term family therapies in selected cases. (2) Supervision of students and social educators who work with groups of children and adolescents, and also engage in family therapies in the ghettos. (3) Support of initiatives that may lead to sound group formations and active self-administration among the inhabitants. (4) Participation in the development and realization of a strategy for the official authorities, concerning these problems, intending to reveal and replace the irrational scapegoat tactics that have so often been the fate of the slum population. (5) As the conflict between the excommunicating and the excommunicated necessarily manifests itself in this very active group, it becomes the task of the psychoanalysts to always observe and try to clarify inner group problems. The model here offered, is the contribution to the discussion of the following questions: (1) How far is psychoanalysis a useful tool in the endeavour to understand social conflicts? (2) What does it mean to the psychotherapist when he gives up his non-interfering position and goes out to people belonging to social groups who are actually incapable of seeking help by themselves? (3) What are the possibilities and difficulties that meet the psychoanalyst when he engages in a larger heterogenous team that will apply sociotherapeutic and political strategies to achieve their aims? (4) What will be the relationship between psychotherapeutic and political activities when one, as here, has the ambition of combining therapeutic and sociopolitical approaches within the frame of a sociotherapeutic concept?