Charles Rojzman is a renowned French social psychologist, author, and international consultant to local, national and international groups and organizations in the public and non-profit sectors.
The goal of his work, which begins with group dialogues and leads to transformative action, is to foster the practice and theory of healthy multicultural and multi-ethnic democracies. Termed in English “transformational social therapy” or TST (French: thérapie sociale), this work aims to transform institutions by helping people address the hatred and violence that separate them and prevent them from working together. Both symbolic and physical, this violence inhibits democracy and lends support to fear-based, authoritarian regimes. Rojzman has worked toward institutional and social change in the fields of education, social work, criminal justice, and conflict resolution.
This work has taken him to most European countries, the United States, North Africa, Rwanda, Central and Latin America. He has directed projects to stem inter-ethnic violence in Israel, France, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. He worked with parents and others in Beslan, North Ossetia, dealing with the aftermath of the horrific school hostage act there in September 2004. In another recent project, he facilitated meetings of key Chechen civil society groups. Rojzman is founder and director of an organization that provides training in social therapy, the Institut Charles Rojzman, working in France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Russia, and the United States.
TST focuses on societal problems that often become visible in poor and ethnically conflicted neighborhoods. He brings together antagonistic groups (youth and police; parents, teachers and students; immigrant and marginalized residents and local authorities) and, based on the understanding that they all have partial knowledge relevant to the problem, helps them create a “collective intelligence.” Through this process group members move from blaming others to taking collective responsibility for the problems they face. The facilitator then helps create bridges between different segments of the community and institutional change agents who can act on the group’s proposals.
Rojzman is a prolific writer, author and co-author of eight published books, plus chapters in several edited books, and some 40 articles. Several of the books have been reissued as paperbacks; one (La peur, la haine et la démocratie — Fear, Hatred, and Democracy) has been translated into Spanish, German, and Russian and two have been translated into English:
His last book, C’est pas moi, C’est lui. Ne pas être victime des autres (It’s not me, it’s him; How to stop being a victim), co-authored with Théa Rojzman, was published by J.C. Lattès in 2006. A book on TST has been published by the leading publisher of French encyclopedias and reference books, Editions Larousse. A “comic strip” about TST, also co-authored with Théa Rojzman, and a book about conflict resolution “Sortir de la violence par le conflit” published by La Decouverte.
Rojzman’s work has received extensive public attention. Two documentaries feature his work, a 23-minute video titled “Charles Rojzman, thérapeute social” and a 72-minute video, “A l’écoute de la police” (Listening to the police). Listening to the Police takes viewers inside a workshop with French national police trainers. Both documentaries have been shown on French national TV and the second has been translated into German. A foundation to support Rojzman’s work has been created in Poland, the Franco-Polish Foundation for New Democratic Practices (http://www.nowademokracja.pl . Rojzman’s work has also been the topic of some 50 media appearance and numerous articles and interviews in major French and German magazines and newspapers, including the major French newspaper, Le Monde. A frequent guest on TV debates and talk shows, he is also an op-ed contributor to the major French newspaper, Le Figaro. He is scheduled for an hour long interview (end of 2007) on the renowned Belgian program, “Noms de dieux," by Edmond Blattchen (a European equivalent of Bill Moyers’ Journal).
Article(s) of this author
Published on 24 February 2011.
"An Active Pessimist" For the first time, Charles Rojzman accepted the presence of a movie camera inside one of his social therapy sessions: an experimental training program designed for trainers in the police academy. The experience, as troubling as it was astonishing, has as its goal helping policemen rebuild relationships with the hostile populations of the inner cities (fr.quartiers). Between role plays, self-awareness, questioning of institutions and meetings with invited guests from the quartiers, the Rojzman method opens the path for "knowing how to live together." Here are the psychotherapist’s (...)
Published on 24 February 2011.
Urban Education program and Office of multicultural Affaires Urban Education 5630, Fall 2010 (CRN070241): Special Topics Seminar Facilitating Dialogue and Action with Diverse Groups Instructors: Professors Novella Keith & Charles Rojzman Rationale We live in a time of increasing social diversity, when groups that have been excluded from the social mainstream clamor to be recognized and included. Reactions to these claims are complex: our times are marked by both increased openness to diversity and increased intolerance, hatred and violence, which threaten the social fabric and democratic life. In (...)
Published on 23 February 2011.
The Need Why are we developing this project? This book brings to American and English-speaking audiences a body of work that has achieved international prominence but, with a few notable exceptions (e.g. Rojzman, 1999a, 1999b), has not appeared in English to date. This work, the theory and practice of transformational social therapy (TST), has been developed and practiced extensively over the past twenty years by the first author, Charles Rojzman, and more recently by his students. Drawing from the fields of depth and social psychology, group therapy, democratic theory, and action research, TST has (...)
