During a recent trip to attend a conference of therapists in Argentina, I found myself in six different countries over the course of five days: Bermuda, USA, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and then back through the USA to Bermuda.

The airport in Santiago is very nice, and flying over the Andes revealed one of the most beautiful mountain ranges I’ve ever seen. I made a mental note to return to Chile some day for a closer look with more time, but I really don’t want to see the inside of another airport for quite awhile.

The conference took place outside of Cordoba, in a small town called Villa Giardino. It is located about an hour and a half, by car, up in Sierras de C|0xf3|rdoba, in a valley between Sierras Chicas on the east and Sierras Grandes on the west. Right now it’s winter for those people. The trees are mostly bare, and the grasses on the mountainsides have not turned green yet. Everything appeared dry.

That is where over 750 therapists gathered for several days in order to see friends and esteemed colleagues. Many were trainees of established trainers in psychotherapy. They came to attend workshops and presentations and to learn from one another, and they came to share their work with people who might appreciate it.

While there I could not help but observe a contrast with professional groups of such therapists I had been with over the last year in Vancouver, British Columbia, Rome, and on the Greek Island of Spetses.

Those gathered in Argentina were predominantly under the age of 30 — by far the majority. They were energetic and passionate; that part was not a stark contrast, for most of the colleagues I know in these groups feel deeply about what they do. However, this energy in Argentina was tempered by respect for the authority of presenters, who often sat at tables, with spotlights on them, and read formal papers.

This respect for authority was probably most obvious in the opening ceremony, at which time all those present stood and sang the national anthem of Argentina, accompanying a very loud sound track of a full orchestra.

During the preliminary comments of the conference organisers, one of them spoke about a social reality in Argentina. She referred to the Holocaust, and she was not meaning what happened to Jewish people in Europe during the Second Word War. She was referring to the abduction and execution of virtually an entire generation during a bleak period of recent history in Argentina.

A dictatorial regime had risen to power, and before anyone could recognise what they were really like, they had decimated the country.

As the speaker mentioned these things, tears formed in the eyes of many people around me and before me, up on the platform, under the lights, where it was obvious and large, people were openly weeping. These people had been through very trying times, and they were still grieving their sad losses.

Each place has its own history. In each place the present experience, the lives of the people who live at that time and place, are shaped by the unique circumstances comprising the overall social, economic, and political features facing the people.

If the situation is bad, it usually takes a lot to alert the people to that fact, and they may boil in the soup of a bad state of affairs for quite some time before throwing off a repressive regime.

It was while sitting at dinner in Argentina with a retired friend and colleague that I really started to contemplate such things. Dr. Philip Lichtenberg had taught sociology for over 35 years at Bryn Mawr’s School of Social Work and Social Research in the United States. He was one of the esteemed presenters in Argentina, for his subject was, and always has been, the way prejudice and power work themselves among leaders and others in society.

Philip received his PhD from Case Western Reserve University and his formal training in Gestalt Therapy at the Gestalt Training Center in San Diego with Erving and Miriam Polster. He wrote ‘Community and Confluence: Undoing the Clinch of Oppression’ and ‘Encountering Bigotry: Befriending Projecting Persons in Everyday Life’.

Although Philip and I had known one another for some time (he had been one of the guest trainers in my own gestalt therapy training group), we had never really discussed our respective political values in the way that came about in Argentina. The mix of the situation for the Argentine people and my conversations with Dr. Lichtenberg provided part of the reason I endure air travel to go to these conferences.

They are growth experiences that I wish I could somehow share and provide for my friends back “home”.