Conciliation and comfort: Group work with bedouin grandmothers

Facilitated group work, as opposed to a social discourse that naturally takes place in an encounter between people who share a common background or interest, is accepted and widespread in the West. The ability of a group to contribute to its members has been described in numerous studies (Whitaker, 1985; Yalom & Leszcz, 2005) in the context of providing an experience of shared concerns, social support, expressing anger, sorrow, loss, frustration, failure, a shared yearning for solutions, personal growth, acknowledgment of inner strengths, comfort, and conciliation. Constituting, as it does, a branch of Western psychology, group work is virtually unknown in Arab society in general and Bedouin society in particular. Arab society, which is fundamentally collectivist, sees the individual as part of a family (hamoula = clan) without the individual foundations with which the individual comes to the therapy group that is familiar in the West. Consequently, building group work with older women, namely Bedouin grandmothers, most of whom are uneducated, is of particular interest and is the focus of the study described in this chapter.