Psychosocial Counseling for Municipalities and Civil Society Organizations

The Else Frenkel-Brunswik Institute is developing an advisory service for politically active actors and civil society groups, communities, and organizations. The aim is to empower and expand the ability to act by strengthening psychosocial skills and by enhancing reflection processes.

CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES

Groups, initiatives, and municipalities working in politics or civil society are confronted with a number of challenges on a daily basis. In addition to external factors, such as financing the work, there are also psychosocial challenges.

EFBI sees conflicts as an unavoidable – although potentially helpful – part of working together in groups. They can productively advance the work through their critical potential. However, there is a risk that deadlocked conflicts, contradictions arising from political work, and conflicts with the environment will also limit the ability to act as well as the political effectiveness of one’s own work. This can result in resignation, efforts seeming pointless, motivation decrease, threatened commitment, or group splitting.

Our advisory work currently focuses on these difficulties connected to political work.

ORGANIZATION

The work of the EFBI team is psychoanalytically and systemically oriented. The counseling should assist in developing and formulating one’s own counseling goals. This can result in a joint (further) development of the group goals. In a further process, the shared experiences in the respective group can also be worked with regarding their future development.

TARGET GROUP

The counseling service is open to groups active in politics or civil society who see their ability to act as limited and want to reflect on the work in a group for clarification.

TEAM AND ALIGNMENT

Counseling is provided by the EFBI employees who are undergoing further training to become group psychoanalysts, depth psychological and/or psychoanalytic psychotherapists, or systemic therapists and consultants at certified training institutes.

The advisory service is free of charge.

Contact

If you are interested or have any questions, please send an email to: efbi@uni-leipzig.de