Whereas most of the above Institute interventions occur in American families focusing on avoiding children’s suffering in Post Divorce Family Life due to Parent Alienation Syndrome (PAS), the most important application of our Institute methodology is to assist family members experiencing far greater trauma at this very moment in other countries.

Children and their mothers and fathers, grandparents at this very second are experiencing extreme forms of cruelty, almost unimaginable for the typical American family. At times, unutterable levels of rage, shame, and terror memories between victim family members and perpetrator family members are emerging.

The focus of our teams on Zoom and in Presbyterian churches here in the States is to create spaces in which to process this suffering and hate, as Moreno would say “in Statu Nascendi.” For the past year, members of the team have been studying internal family systems theory IFS in Lebanon so as to integrate that system into our EHPD trauma transformation work.

This work is not for the faint-hearted and demands higher levels of work on the self so as to transform the rage, shame, and terror formerly experienced by members of a given religious or ethnic group at the hands of perpetrators. At this moment, the focus of our work is on the tragic suffering of Palestinian and Jewish peoples in Gaza and throughout Israel, and more recently, Syria.

Briefly, our method begins by bringing together on Zoom persons who have mutually experienced perpetration and victimhood by another group at present or in the past. These interactions occur within a safe, virtual space — with an understanding that rage, shame and other difficult feelings may emerge, but must safely do so. The group begins by reading a relevant book about the suffering and trauma of each side. This is done for 4  weeks. In the second phase, individuals are offered the possibility of being chosen to be part of an  Ennea Hellinger psychodramatic encounter on Zoom. Only those persons will be accepted whom our staff decides will benefit from the initial sessions. These sessions follow the encounter poem of Moreno, presented below:

“I will rip out your eyes and you will rip out mine and I will place mine where yours were and you will place yours where mine were…. and then we will see each other for the first time.”