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1)  Any conception of the Other as fixed or absolute dangerously lends itself to the readiness to dehumanize the Other.

2)  The facile notion that “we are one blood” is not helpful, because it threatens a group’s much needed sense of self-stability and differentiation.

3)  Of even greater threat to participant groups in conflict is any notion of the self as changing or relative, because a precipitous readiness to change poses a threat to a group’s identity.

Introduction

Manifestations of violent ethnonational conflicts are inseparable from history.  Invariably, these forms of conflict are subserved by the shift from events of history to a contemporary sense of history.  In this respect we are dealing with appropriations of history. The psychoanalyst Heinz Hartmann (1958) spoke to this issue of appropriation in ways that are consistent with my understanding of historical transformations:

Man does not come to terms with his environment anew in every generation; his relation to the environment is guaranteed by an evolution peculiar to man, namely, the influence of tradition and the survival of the works of man. We take over from others a great many of our methods for solving problems.  The works of man objectify the methods he has discovered from solving problems and thereby become factors of continuity, so that man lives, so to speak, in past generations as well as in his own (p. 30; emphasis added).

In addition to the transgenerational transmission of destructive aggression, I want to suggest that the appropriations of history have very specific contents.  With respect to violent ethnonational conflicts, the pivotal issues are difference and identity.  It is as if humans had an obligation, albeit self imposed, to cleanse ourselves, purify ourselves, in order to purge ourselves of some inchoate and unmetabolized parts of ourselves; parts of ourselves which we dare not admit as belonging to us and must therefore be housed elsewhere; or worse, deposited to the world of no place, namely, death of the Other.

Before spelling out precisely how humans live in the past as well as in the present and what they do with the Other to purify themselves and to render the Other inferior, useless, or dead, I want to plot a trajectory of how the events of history become appropriated as a sense of history. I shall speak of this process as staging.

Staging and Transforming Historical Grievances:

The Sedimentation and Reactivation of Cultural Memory

The Estonian semiotician Yurij Lotman and his co-worker B. A. Uspensky (1971) defined culture as “the nonhereditary memory of a community, a memory expressing itself in a system of constraints and prescriptions” (p. 411).  Treating culture as a social phenomenon and specifically as a memory and record of what a community has experienced, they connected culture to past historical experience.  Culture then “is only perceived ex post facto” (p. 411).  To be precise, “When people speak of the creation of a new culture, they are inevitably looking ahead; that is, they have in mind that which they presume will become a memory from the point of view of the reconstructable future” (p. 412).  In his Cartesian Meditations, the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1929) wrote of the dialectic between sedimentation (fading) and reactivation (recall) and the strategy of reducing historical fact to a sense of and a reconstitution of that historical fact.  Ernesto Laclau (1990), an Argentinean political scientist, echoing Husserl, wrote on the shift from historical givens to new conditions of possibility.

Along similar lines, the German literary theorist Wolfgang Iser (1992) built on the work of the later Husserl to articulate his notion of staging as lived anthropological category rather than as a reflected epistemological category.  Staging, for Iser, “must always be preceded by something to which it has to give appearance” (p. 885).  He continues: “This ‘something’ can never be completely covered by the staging, because otherwise staging itself would become its own enactment.  In other words, every staging lives on what it is not. For everything that materialized in it stands in the service of something absent, which, although given presence through something else that is present, cannot be present itself.  Staging is thus an absolute form of doubling, not least because it always retains awareness that this doubling is ineradicable” (p. 885).  What enables staging, according to Iser, to make such a separation between an historical given and its new presentation is its inherent separation between the historical mode and the new something that is to be given appearance.  Staging then encompasses past and present, absence and concrete presentation, a given and a simulacrum, fading and recall as well as extension and supplementation of that which is being reactivated and recalled.

This journey from cultural memory through recall to transformation of historical grievances and how this journey is operationalized into praxis is the subject of this chapter.

Some Specific Modes of Storage of Cultural Memory;

Anticipating Praxis

In order to overturn destructive appropriations of history, a heuristic approach for unmasking orginary but persistent mandates must be undertaken.  By heuristic, I mean experimental and pre-theoretical ideas that can be tested in the field, given up if they do not work, and stabilized into theory if they can be shown to merit serious consideration. By originary and persistent mandates, I am referring to the mandate to preserve, let us say, the originary legacy of ashes in new but equally destructive forms.  It is as if the motor of destruction remains but the license plate changes.  I am referring here to the psychoanalytic notion of change of function.  Accordingly, Hartmann (1958) suggests that “What defensive operations were anchored in instincts may subsequently be performed in the service of and by means of the ego, though naturally, new regulations too will arise in the course of development of the ego and the id” (p. 49).  He continues: “Differentiation progresses not only by creation of new apparatuses to master new demands and new tasks, but also and mainly by new apparatuses taking over, on a higher level, functions which were performed by more primitive means” (p. 50).  Change of function can manifest itself in destructive ways, such as murder in one generation, suicide in the next.  Or it can manifest itself in a higher form when the next generation chooses a more productive means of survival.  Let us now look at four specific means of rupture and storage of cultural memory.  Appropriating Hillis Miller (1992), I have suggested a four-step heuristic strategy (see Apprey, 1999) to observe and ultimately transform received hatred from an Other group.  These four rubrics are related but they are separated here in order to effect greater clarity.  The key rubrics of the heuristic strategy are: (i) line; (ii) character; (iii) anastamosis, that is, transgenerational haunting, and (iv) figure.

Under the rubric of line, we may think of a broken line, a cut, an incision, a gap, rupture, lost ancestry as in the wound of an absence in the African American lineage.  Into this cut, as it were, may be inserted a world of lived experience where the oppressed has lost sight of the original enemy and may attack its own, as in Black-on-Black crime, or variants of lost identity.

Under the rubric of character (from the Greek word Kharassein, to brand) we may think of a scratch into the skin, the verbs to engrave, to make a deep impression, to carve; in short, to put a hot rod in blazing fire, make a deep branding impression on the skin of a slave and in so branding him or her, declare the signification “I own you.”  Or, a Nazi soldier may pin a star of David on the chest of a Jewish person and declare the constructed signification, “You are vermin.  You must burn.”

I now want to take these two, line and character together.  The cut into a line introduces a rupture in the identity of a people, creating a potential hole in their world.  However, the branding, which once existed in the original mandate of slavery, can now change from one hand to an other.  A reversal of agency can now occur both in the world of the broken line or in the means of preserving the poisonous history.  Witness excessive use of tattoos or haircoloring as modes of preserving the poison of reversal of agency.  Horizonal with the words, “broken line” and “character” are two terms used by the French psychoanalyst, Jean Laplanche (1999) “intromission” and “implantation.”He uses those terms with respect to individual pathological formations.  However, they will serve my description of shared injury to and branding of a people.  Laplanche (1999) writes that “implantation is a process which is common, everyday, normal or neurotic” (p. 136).  But it has a virulent variant and that is the one I wish to invoke here. Laplanche (1999) writes:

Beside it [that is, apart from the normal or neurotic variant], as its violent variant, a place must be given to intromission.  While implantation allows the individual to take things up actively, at once translating and repressing, one must try to conceive of a process which blocks this, short-circuits the differentiation of the agencies in the process of their formation, and puts into the interior an element resistant to all metabolisation (p. 136).

According to Laplanche, then, implantation allows the injured party to actively take things up as well as attempt to translate or repress the injury. Intromission, however, forecloses translation or transformation. Instead, it renders the injury resistant to change. His words are worth echoing again and again: intromission short-circuits differentiation and “puts into the interior an element resistant to all metabolization” (p. 136). Using the body and its skin-envelope as well as the orifices of the body as metaphor, Laplanche (1999) writes: “Intromission relates principally to anality and orality. Implantation refers, rather, to the surface of the body as a whole, its perceptive periphery” (p. 137; emphasis added). I imagine from Laplanche’s distinction that the skin (implantation) remembers when it is broken into whether it is a matter of a subject seeing and/or remembering a massacre of a people, or a subject concretely and actively receiving pain from torture. I imagine further from Laplanche’s description that sodomy (intromission via anality) is known by perpetrators of ethnic violence as the most shaming strategy.  In the United States, the case of white New York City policemen forcibly inserting a toilet plunger into a black man’s anus and mouth speaks amply to this issue of intromission as a shaming strategy.  Laplanche does not mention intromission via genitality but we can add it to the repertoire of shaming devices when perpetrators of ethnic violence rape the mothers, wives, and daughters of the enemy. For the male relatives of these assaulted women, it is as if the males themselves have been raped and sodomized.  For them, it is vicariously a homosexual assault not easily forgotten or transformed.  In Laplanche’s language, these strategies of intromission cause injuries that are not easily metabolized.

Under the rubric of transgenerational haunting I have evoked elsewhere (see Apprey; 1996, 1997) Carolivia Herron’s (1991) haunting description of generations of African Americans suffering the vicissitudes of transgenerational trauma:

I shall summarize:

A:  The females shall be raped by slave masters; the males shall be murdered by slave masters.

B:  The males who are not murdered shall be sold away.

C:  The males who are neither murdered nor sold away shall marry females who are not murdered or sold away.

D:  In marriage, enslaved males and former slaves shall have revenge over females perceived to have consented to the destruction of males.

E:  Women and daughters shall therefore be raped over and over again by enslaved men or former slaves.

This is a sequence of appropriative and appositional shifts and transfers where there occurs: (i) the historical presentation of rape and murder in the first instance; (ii) appropriation by an ethnic group of a transgressors cruelty, to serve a secondary purpose of revenge; and (iii) ossification of a structure of experience that says that victims may heap cruelty that once originated with external transgressors, unto their own kind.

In transgenerational haunting, then, a concrete staging, a doubling, a reactivation of sedimented historical grievances, a replay and an extension occur, and it is this transformation that starts the process of losing sight of one’s historical enemies.

Lastly, under the rubric of figure, we may think of a torturer disfiguring the Other; a colonizer reducing a human being’s status from a citizen to a non-person, a slave owner in the American South reducing a human being to 3/5 of a person, and from the historical instance of exchange of goods (metaphor) to the perverse metonymy of selling persons as in slavery. Dehumanization, par excellence, subserves this rubric.  In post-Soviet Baltic States the Russian population is experiencing the horror of not being able to use one’s own language in order to become full citizens in countries where Russification, in the past, reduced the languages of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian into those that were secondary in importance to the Russian language, at least in the eyes of the Soviet authorities.

I have so far considered history as that which is reconstituted by groups in conflict. Sedimentations of historical grievances are reactivated and then extended by those who choose to relive them. In observing aggrieved people, we have an obligation to know the actual historical injury, how it is mentalized and extended. We have a further obligation to understand the historical motivation behind acts of aggression such as the mandate to render an Other group extinct, or an errand to render an Other group slaves or dead. Knowing the mandate or errand will subsequently tell us how the aggrieved group has stored the historical memory. We would need to know what the aggrieved group has stored in that imaginary space of a broken line; what reversal of agency has taken place so that they are harming their own by their own hand, having lost sight of the original enemy. We would need to know the many ways in which traumatic history has been deferred, and to what extent the aggrieved group has been disfigured, dehumanized and remains traumatized as a people.

Praxis: Heuristic Steps for Negotiating Ethnonational Conflicts:

The Case of Estonia and its Russians

The Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction (CSMHI) of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, is an interdisciplinary center whose work in conflict resolution requires the collaboration of psychoanalysts, historians, diplomats and other scholars. Over the past decade, CSMHI has been invited to participate in the resolution of conflicts between nations as well as other related ethnonational and factional disputes. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Estonia wished to restore its political as well as its psychological independence. CSMHI had participated in other cases with participants from both Russia and Estonia and accordingly became an excellent credible candidate to assist both sides in the process of Estonia’s psychopolitical independence from and co-existence with Russia as its neighbor. The methodology of CSMHI has been described elsewhere. One description of the methodology (see Apprey, 1996) posits four heuristic steps in the conflict resolution process which are meant to be suggestive but not exhaustive or cast in stone. Briefly then, the following steps operate in the methodology of CSMHI:

1) Intensive confidential interviews are conducted with a cross-section of leaders from all constituencies to ensure that CSMHI personnel understand the historical and contemporary concerns facing Estonians and Russians who have chosen to live in Estonia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

2) A series of psychopolitical dialogues between representatives of interested parties (20-30 in large, plenary sessions, to open and close each day of talks, and 8-10 people in small work group sessions) during which lines of communication are opened, concerns shared, and hidden psychological barriers that divide interested parties are brought to the surface, discussed, and ultimately transformed so that they no longer impede negotiation and movement toward common goals. The process often involves recognizing the influence of historical relationships and events, how they recur, how they change function when they are perpetuated under different guises to serve new purposes. This second step is essential to the success of step three.

3) Cooperative development of or investment in specific strategies and projects based on the new understanding of the divisive issues that have surfaced during the dialogues. Projects emerge from psychopolitical dialogue based on newly established coalitions between members, the shared needs and the sense that the implementation of these projects is going to be part of a longer term process of change. In this third step, projects are undertaken jointly by the parties in conflict, and they do so with input from the third party facilitators.

4) The third party (CSMHI) withdraws as the community continues working toward common goals, through dialogues that complement and support ongoing projects. Thus the fourth step involves projects independently undertaken by the groups hitherto in conflict but without input from the third party facilitators.

Some Basic Assumptions:

In the field of conflict resolution, I suggest that any conception of the other as fixed or absolute dangerously lends itself to the readiness to dehumanize the other. Nor is the facile notion that “we are one blood” a helpful solution because it poses a threat to a much-needed sense of self-stability and differentiation. Of even greater threat to participants in conflict is any notion of self as changing or relative because a precipitous readiness to change poses a threat to a group’s identity as well. The dimension of discourse with the Other as process and trajectory between absolute alterity and relative alterity, then, is the subject of this paper. Here the dimension of discourse with the enemy as process of engagement between Self and Other that can potentially make continuity out of the antinomies of absolute and relative alterity will be shown to reveal itself in the arena of conflict enactment and resolution between two feuding factions. I hold the view that Self as agency is an approximation, the Other as absolute a misnomer, and that when Self and Other engage in a process of resolution of conflict, an ambiguous play space opens up fostering an exchange of representations of Self and Other.

Way-stations of the Trajectory from Absolute to Relative Alterity

Let me outline four way-stations that typically occupy that epistemic play space of description and conversation between absolute alterity and relative alterity. When one works in small groups with two parties in conflict the group work typically begins with polarization as the first step.

I. Polarization

Under the category of polarization the Other is demonized. The Other is imagined to be a terrible Other. That Other has a marginal status. Preconstructed as dangerous, the Other is posited in close juxtaposition to the subject’s own relatively favored position.

II: Differentiation Within Each Faction

Under the rubric of differentiation within each integral faction (or self-same subject system) a second phase follows when facilitators have permitted the process of polarization to take place and have allowed it to assume the necessary function of self definition and clarification of borders between the two sides. Here, differentiation within each side becomes possible because of the emerging recognition of paradoxes within the ideological positions of each faction. Here, as de Certeau (1984), Dollimore (1991), and Uebel (1996) indicate, the border between participants of each faction are recognized as having a double status of marker of separation and a line of commonality within each side. In this respect “to be against that is (opposed to) is also to be against that is (close up, in proximity to) or, in other words, up against” (Dollimore, 1991, p. 229). For example, when Estonians fight for Soviets against Estonians who fight for Nazis, they are against each other, or opposed to each other. Yet because both sides are Estonians they are close to each other or proximal to each other. (In short they are both close to and up against each other.)

III: The Threshold of Border Crossing and The Crossing of Mental Borders

In this third way-station of the two sides negotiating and subsequently crossing mental borders, both sides together encounter the trauma and obsession of their historical grievances. Here, the place and function of dialogue as that which creates mental spaces, that which opens up new illusionistic spaces, present themselves. Borderlines open up and become recognized as potential spaces between the two disputing factions. Those gaps or middle spaces which have now become illusionistic spaces for bridge building (Pruyser, 1983), now symbolize exchange and encounter that facilitate an eventual crossing of mental borders. This crossing of mental borders effects the transformation of the trauma and obsession of historical grievances. This third way-station is preeminently a place of playfulness and fantastic metaphorization of conflicting positions admixed with serious dialogue. For example, you might hear something like: “when you love a woman you must say it often enough so that she’d believe you. ”This crossing of mental borders that transforms trauma and obsession of historical grievances operates in ways where the two sides that had hitherto been polarized now operate conjunctly. Here, one term proposes the other for its meaning. The hitherto absolutely Other is integrated to the self (same subject system) through encounter with and resolution of ambivalence. In making complementarities out of antinomies, absence or exclusion simultaneously becomes a presence. It is not until this way-station reaches a peak of metaphorization with both sides contributing to the new imagery and imagining that the establishment of common ground can be trusted.

IV: The Establishment of Common Ethical Positions and/or Pragmatic Solutions

In this final way-station of the creation of new and adaptive solutions, ethical positions of trial actions of mutual responsibility emerge. These ethical positions lead to pragmatic projects as indices of internalization of new and generalizable adaptive solutions.

Summary: Returning to the Dynamic(s) behind the Four Phases of the Conflict Resolution Group Process

In summary, then, four typical phases present themselves in the evolution of the conflict resolution group. Let us now identify the dynamic that links the phases with the vicissitudes of alterity, from absolute to relative alterity and to the exchange of self and other that shows itself in the metaphorization which in turn permits a credible consensus building process.

In the first phase of polarization where one group may demonize the other in implicit and/or explicit ways, it is essential for the facilitator to recognize that the exorcism of the Other is a first and necessary step. It is necessary for the distinct purpose of defining each group’s identity and for situating oneself with a clearer sense of who the subject is; one may know for the moment who the enemy is or at least who the enemy is thought to be. If this part of the process is accepted as adaptive to begin with, the participants are then able to reveal the anxiety that accompanies each polarized position. In a word, by accepting the initial wall that is built around each faction, each feuding party may then borrow strength from the facilitator(s) to examine how anxiously the wall gets built. The initial dynamic of demonization of the Other ironically needs to emerge only to be discarded to facilitate entry into the next and second phase in the evolution of the group process.

In the second phase when differentiation within each polar faction emerges the most helpful dynamic that permits the group to evolve is that of paradox. For example, when Estonians recognize that they were forced to fight on both sides of World War II, a new level of thoughtful reflection replaces the need to demonize the Other. Likewise, Russians come to recognize their heterogeneity. In the process they remind the group that some Russian-speaking Estonians, such as Russian Jewry and Old Believers, came to Estonia to flee from Soviet oppression. Others, however, were KGB agents and retired former military officers of the Soviet era. Paradoxes begin to create a new level of empathic reflection within each polar faction as well as across the psychological ramparts each side had created earlier.

In the third phase of crossing mental borders, the dynamic of metaphorization in the dialogue between the feuding parties opens up new spaces where new ideas can be played with. Playing and bridge-building as illusionistic processes promote new representations of feuding and consensus building. The inadequation of describing Russians as wild, non-European Asians who might eat up the enemy gives way to joining with them to seek mutually beneficial solutions. The inadequation of seeing Estonians as vengeful human rights abusers gives way to the recognition of the Other as needing to include Russians in the building of a greater civil society and a democratic country. Of course, the sources of the original conflicts remain, because history cannot be changed, but the participants have the courage to encounter their conflicts. The result of the metaphor-driven and meaningful dialogue that emerges is that there is now a replacement of concrete passions by a new order of designations to which all parties can relate. All parties can relate to the metaphors of the policeman called responsibility, family feud, marital discord, divorce, step-parenting, and so on and so forth. Accordingly, humor and thought can converge to promote a higher level of engaging each other in a situation of conflict as they seek building blocks for consensus building. This is the journey toward a condition that Vamik Volkan (1992) has aptly termed “a vaccination” where they recognize their conflicts, are able to engage each other, but the conflict is no longer malignant. Now, they are emotionally free to make ethical statements in the fourth phase and join forces to create mutually beneficial projects.

Addendum: Community Projects

I indicated earlier that in the overall methodology of the conflict resolution program there is the sequence of (i) the diagnostic phase (assessment); (ii) the psychopolitical process (dialogue); (iii) projects conducted by the feuding groups with the assistance of the third party facilitators; and (iv) projects without the third party facilitators. I indicated further that without the fourth step our ability to assess the success of the third-party facilitators would be limited. A successful fourth step, then, would indicate sustainability of the original project by the community and their capacity to generalize outcomes into other communities that need interethnic conflict resolution programs.

Owing to limitations of space, I shall provide a very brief account of one of the three community projects that were undertaken by CSMHI from 1997 to 1999.

Selection of Sites and Rationale:

Each of the three sites must have approximately 50% of indigenous Estonian speakers and 50% of Russian speakers.

With this numerical parity, each project site would be assisted by the facilitators to (i) form a non-governmental organization (NGO) that would undertake the practical tasks involved in community building; (ii) decide in a democratic fashion and through a process of dialogue how they would spend $50,000 USD to create a mutually acceptable project. (iii) In the first year (1997-1998) they would meet weekly, fortnightly or monthly and by the end of the year they should have a consensus. (iv) In the second year (1998-1999) they would implement their chosen project.(v) The decision-making process is the most crucial exercise in creating a civic democratic process. Whereas decisions generally came from Moscow during the Soviet period, these groups must now practice decision making in a democratic way on their own. (vi) The psychological component of the dialogue process cannot be underestimated. Without it, the groups might precipitously choose a project and still hate each other, therefore limiting the full impact of the integration project and possibly sabotaging each other.

Project Hand-in-Hand at Mustamäe:

Mustamäe, a suburb of Tallinn is the location for multiple kindergarten sites which are segregated according to language, Estonian or Russian. The kindergarten age in Estonia is 2½ to 6 years of age. It is a popular notion for indigenous Estonians to think of Russian children as more boisterous and so if the two groups of children were now to be educated together in the same kindergarten, the Russians would run over the Estonians. By policy then, there is a ratio of one in five Russian children who are educated in Estonian kindergartens.

As a child analyst, I am curious about perceptions of children which end up in policy. Therefore, I must visit Russian kindergartens and Estonian kindergartens to get a sense of each one of them before the project begins. I am also very aware that the Estonian government wants Russian residents of Estonia to learn the Estonian language in order to become full citizens. I also am aware of a human and potential situation where there would be anxiety about Russians knowing the Estonian language because knowing a language also paves a way to knowing how to predict the world of the Other. Therefore I would treat this project with every deliberate discretion. Although high level members of the Estonian government asked for this project long before the NGO chose it, I would not assume that there would be no resistance to it. Therefore, there would be limited publicity at the beginning.

The Mustamäe Project, named Project Käsikäes, meaning Hand-in-Hand, was a two tiered project: the first part being the teaching of the Estonian language to 240 Russian children in 14 Russian kindergartens; the second part being an interactional one where the Russian children would communicate in Estonian to Estonian children, play with them, sing with them, undertake mutually beneficial projects, etc.

The criteria for success were established by an independent evaluator, Jay Rothman (1997):

MUSTAMAE

All these criteria for success were met.

1. A new model for teaching Estonian language to young Russians was created. Two editions of a textbook and a teacher’s edition were written for the project and for the first time in Estonia by the head of the NGO, Ly Krikk.

2. A governmental foundation charged with funding integration projects funded the project after CSMHI completed their work, demonstrating a sense of ownership for the project by the government.

3. There is a broader community impact in language education. Russian parents too now have classes to learn the language themselves. There is now a new-found three tier integration effort taking place: Russian parents now interact with Estonian parents; Estonian children interact with Russian children more than ever; Russian teachers and Estonian teachers now have on-going and joint continuing education activities to ensure that the development of Russian and Estonian children remains a human issue rather than exclusively a Russian issue or Estonian issue. The 1 in 5 Russian to Estonian classroom ratio has now changed in many of the Estonian kindergartens. The language teachers employed by the NGO are now being integrated into the regular educational system. The children of the Hand-in-Hand project are now vigorously sought after by elementary schools one year ahead of time.

4. The NGO and its teachers are continuing with their work after the CSMHI pullout.

5. However, we remain consultants to teachers, scholars, and high-level government officials to advance their integration efforts. The government is even in a position to showcase their efforts toward integration of its Russian citizens in their desire to become part of the European Union and NATO.

The other two project sites were Klooga (see Apprey, 1998) and Mustvee. Klooga chose to build its integration efforts around the refurbishing of a community center which now houses part of their library, a dance studio, a library center, and a home for the activities of the NGO. The Mustvee site chose to create an information center to promote ecotourism.

I have commented on the need to vigilantly understand history, how it is sedimented, reactivated and extended. I have indicated further how a praxis for a conflict resolution process takes into account polarization of views by feuding parties as a starting point in the process of dialogue, continuing with the multiplicity of views within each faction, followed by the crossing of mental borders, and finally the establishment of an ethic of responsibility. It is this ethic of responsibility that gets operationalized when feuding parties choose to carry out community projects together. Third party facilitators must ensure sustainability and generality of their projects by modeling for the feuding parties how to promote the creation of a civic society in a democracy and the cultivation of the psychological process that advances the work. Finally, the facilitators must know how to end the formal part of their involvement and how to transition their efforts into offering consultations when they are asked for.

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