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They forced me into this tiny little interrogation room off the big anteroom,\\xa0a whole mob\\xa0of policemen shouting and screaming.\\xa0I thought I would\\xa0perish there, that I was going to\\xa0die there and then, which was exactly what they wanted me to think.\\xa0Their intention was to overwhelm me with\\xa0terror,\\xa0and they did.\\xa0But then\\xa0Swanepoel\\u2019s interrogation partner, a man named\\xa0Harvey Richter,\\xa0produced this brick and he held it up in front of me right across my eyes and I thought, looking at its granular surface,\\xa0that it would abrade my face when\\xa0he\\xa0hit me with it.\\xa0But he didn\'t, he put it down in front of me and said: Stand on it.\\xa0

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Episode Description:\\xa0John begins our journey through his past by describing his family life before his arrest and torture at the age of 21 at the hands of the South African Security Police. We learn of his family\'s longstanding history of opposition to political injustice. He\\xa0then\\xa0recounts his methods of survival during his imprisonment which included forming a \'relationship\' with the brick he was forced to stand on for days and nights. He also internally\\xa0relied upon\\xa0his loving parents, his girlfriend, his Jewish identity, and\\xa0The Sounds of Silence. He was held in solitary confinement and brutalized until his release to travel to Israel.\\xa0

After establishing his life in England,\\xa0John\\xa0eventually began training as a psychotherapist. He describes having life-changing personal treatments including two analyses and he has become a contributor to the field especially to the world of analytic group therapy. He shares with us vignettes of patients he has worked with and how he has turned \'swords into plowshares\' in his efforts at transforming his own scars into the act of healing others.\\xa0

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Our Guest:\\xa0John\\xa0Schlapobersky, BA MSc is a psychoanalytic and couple psychotherapist and a group analyst accredited by the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy. After many years in private practice at the Group Analytic Practice, he established his own Bloomsbury Psychotherapy Practice in 2009. He is also a training analyst and faculty member at the Institute of Group Analysis\\xa0and an honorary research fellow at the Birkbeck College University of London. He has served as faculty at the London Centre for Psychotherapy,\\xa0Tavistock\\xa0Centre for Couple Relationships (TCCR) and is a founding member of the British Society for Couple Psychotherapists and Counsellors. He teaches internationally on topics that include group studies, psychoanalytic and relational theory, and trauma. His commitments include programs in Australia, China, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Japan, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA, and elsewhere. He was Program Chair for the Group Analytic Society Symposium in 2011: Cultures, Conflict, and Creativity. John was formerly a Consultant Psychotherapist for the Traumatic Stress Clinic, London, and The Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture which, as a founding trustee, he helped establish in 1985. It is now called Freedom\\xa0From\\xa0Torture, a leading human rights charity.\\xa0

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Recommended Readings:\\xa0

Bernstein, H. (1994)\\xa0The Rift: The Exile Experience of South Africans.\\xa0London: Jonathan Cape. Reissued Persephone Books, Bath UK, 2020.\\xa0

Pines, M. (1998)\\xa0Circular Reflections: Selected Papers in Psychoanalysis and Group Analysis. Jessica Kingsley, London.\\xa0

Rosenthal, N. (2014)\\xa0The Gift of Adversity. New York: Jeremy P.\\xa0Tarcher/Penguin.\\xa0

Sachs, Albie. (1969)\\xa0The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs.\\xa0London: Sphere. Reissued Africa Book Centre, London, 1978.\\xa0

Sachs, Albie (1990)\\xa0The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter. Oakland: University of California Press. Reissued Souvenir Press, 2014.\\xa0

Schlapobersky, J. (2016)\\xa0From\\xa0The\\xa0Couch To The Circle: Group-Analytic Psychotherapy In Practice. Routledge, London.\\xa0

Schlapobersky, John\\xa0R.(2021)\\xa0When They Came For Me: The Hidden Diary Of An Apartheid Prisoner.\\xa0Berghan\\xa0Books, Oxford and New York.\\xa0