Chapter 1: Introduction
To be sure, criticism of self consciousness, the demand for a revision of the basic form of perceiving oneself and others prevalent in our own society, will meet understandable resistance. The basic structure of the idea we have of ourselves and other people is a fundamental precondition of our ability to deal successfully with other people and, at least within the confines of our own society, to communicate with them. If it is called into question, our own security is threatened. What was certain becomes uncertain. . . . But without throwing oneself for a time into the sea of uncertainty one cannot escape the contradictions and inadequacies of deceptive certainty.
(Elias, 1991, pp92â93)
The central concern of this book is that of making sense, in general, of the phenomenon of human relating. It is an exploration of different ways of thinking about how individual and collective identities come about, how they are interrelated and how they change. The key questions are: Who am I and how have I come to be who I am? Who are we and how have we come to be who we are? How are we all changing, evolving, or to put it another way, learning? These are fundamental questions in any field of study to do with human action and interaction and they always raise issues to do with individuals and groups and the relationships between them. These questions also raise issues to do with what constitutes healthy and productive relating, as well as what constitutes failures of relating, what blocks change and what keeps us stuck in unproductive relationships. The arguments developed in this book are, therefore, relevant to those concerned with managing, leading and belonging to organizations, as well as those involved in education, training and development. However, I will be focusing my attention on thinking about therapeutic groups, leaving the reader to make translations to other areas of interest.
I am not setting out to provide an explicit set of prescriptions for group therapy or any other kind of activity in groups for that matter. My interest is, rather, in explanations of, or ways of thinking about, what we are doing in groups because I believe that it is in engaging with the contradictions between our various acts of thought that we begin to make more sense of what we are doing together. An emphasis on ways of thinking frequently seems to prompt the question: What difference does it make in practice? This question immediately reveals a key taken-for-granted feature of current Western thought. We have come to split ways of thinking as theory from action as practice. Such a split is, however, problematic. When one participates in a therapy group, one is thinking and acting, theorizing and practicing, at the same time. It follows that the kinds of theories one holds about individuals and groups inevitably affect what one says and does as an individual participant in groups in myriad small but potentially important ways. As one thinks differently so one practices differently. Implications for practicing emerge in exploring ways of thinking and immediate calls for âwhat it means in practiceâ can easily close down the exploration.
Another position from which I start is that in coming to understand the differences between one way of thinking and another, it is essential to explore how they have evolved. I will, therefore, be exploring the historical evolution of two contradictory, indeed I would say incompatible, ways of thinking about the individual and the group in Western thought. The first is a stream of thought identified with Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, the neo-Kantians and Freud through to modern psychoanalysis. Basically, this is a way of thinking about mind as inside a person and social as a system outside a person. Individuals are then said to be social because they represent the social outside in the inside of their minds. I will argue that the result is a dualistic way of thinking in which paradox is eliminated. The second stream of thought runs from the reaction to Kant by the romantic idealists, particularly Hegel, to the dialectical process thinking of George Herbert Mead and Norbert Elias. Basically, this is a way of thinking in which both mind and society are the pattering activities of human bodies. For actions, there can be no inside or outside and so mind comes to be thought of as forming social interactions while being formed by them at the same time. Paradox, in the sense of simultaneously forming and being formed, is thus essential to this way of thinking. Individuals are then thought of as social not because of representations of social relations in their minds but because the processes of mind are the same processes as social relating. Individual and social are simply two aspects of one process â they are the singular and the plural of relating between human bodies.
Some traditions of group psychotherapy, particularly Foulkesâ group-analytic one, try to hold the above two distinct streams of thought together in a form of âboth . . . andâ or âfigure . . . groundâ thinking in which one alternates between them. This book will present arguments against such âboth . . . andâ thinking, primarily that the elimination of paradox in the alternation between two contradictory theories clouds our thinking.
Contradictory strands in thinking about group-analytic therapy
As a psychoanalyst, Foulkes introduced a major innovation in therapeutic practice when he began to work with patients in a group. However, he did more than conduct the psychoanalysis of individuals in a group. He moved away from a dyad to the group and developed distinctive ways of explaining what he was doing. In Taking the Group Seriously (1998), Dalal has teased apart two contradictory strands in Foulkesâ thinking about the therapy group. The first strand is drawn from Freudian psychoanalytic theory, which focuses attention on the individual and understands individual psychology in terms of innate drives. Groups are thought of as being formed by individuals and so are to be understood in terms of individual psychology. Groups then act back on individuals to shape individual psyches in the clash between drive discharge and social constraints. The other strand in Foulkesian thought is derived from the process sociology of Elias ([1939] 2000, 1991), which fundamentally contests the notion of innate behaviors, holding that the manner in which individuals experience themselves is formed by social/group processes that they simultaneously form. For Elias, individual mind and social relations are simply two aspects of the same process. Foulkes reflects Elias when he claims that âthe individual is social to the core.â
As Dalal cogently explains, these two theories are contradictory. Freudâs psychoanalytic theory grants primacy to the individual, understanding group functioning in terms of intrapsychic agencies and innate, universal drives. Eliasâ process sociology grants primacy to neither the individual nor the group but considers both as aspects of basically the same social processes evolving over long time periods. Neither of these two theories presents a dichotomy requiring one to think in terms of either the individual or the group. Both are theories about the relationship between the individual and the group but one locates the explanation of this relationship in innate universals and the other locates the explanation in the detailed specifics of particular histories of social evolution. The two explanations are, therefore, mutually incompatible, a contention that I will justify in some detail in Part II.
As group-analytic thinking has developed over the last half century, it has retained both of Foulkesâ contradictory ways of thinking, largely without noticing the internal inconsistency. However, it is clear that the psychoanalytic strand has predominated, while the process view drawn from Elias has been accorded relatively little attention. My purpose in writing this book is to explore how we might develop a way of understanding what we are doing in a therapy group if we keep these two contradictory strands of thought apart and focus entirely on a process theory of the relationship between the individual and the group. The purpose of developing such a perspective is to move toward an internally consistent way of explaining what we, therapists and patients, are doing together in a therapy group, one which avoids trying to hold two incompatible ways of thinking together. In order to clarify what I mean by a âprocess perspectiveâ, I will be exploring, in some detail, the differences between such a perspective and theories of individual and group drawn from a combination of psychoanalysis and systems thinking. I will be exploring how one might think of therapy groups without drawing in any way on psychoanalytic meta psychological theory, on the one hand, or altogether abandoning a meta theory, on the other.
Toward a process theory of the individual and the group
The chapters that follow explore Norbert Eliasâ view of social processes, bringing his view together with George Herbert Meadâs theory of symbolic interactionism (1934). Both Elias and Mead were concerned with human relating and the relationship between individual and social, which they understood in process terms. I will be arguing that their theories, in their similarities and their differences, can be understood within a wider general framework provided by the natural sciences of complexity. Over the last few decades, biologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists and other natural scientists have been developing general theories of iterative nonlinear interaction between entities that have relevance in many fields of enquiry. More recently, these ideas have been taken up in medicine, psychology, sociology, political science and organizational theory. I will be arguing that the complexity sciences provide analogies for human interaction that can be interpreted in human action terms using the theories of Elias and Mead.
In drawing together the work of Elias, Mead and the complexity scientists, I will be presenting a theory of human interaction, which colleagues and I have been calling complex responsive processes of relating (Fonseca, 2001; Griffin, 2001; Shaw, 2002; Stacey, 2000; Stacey, 2001a; Stacey, Griffin & Shaw, 2000; Streatfield 2001). We developed this perspective as a way of understanding organizational life and what we are doing together as managers and consultants. In this book, I will be arguing that the perspective of complex responsive processes also provides a way of explaining what we are doing together in a therapy group. Most of the book will be concerned with the theory of complex responsive processes and how it differs from psychoanalytic theory but there is one chapter (Chapter 8) which provides pointers to the implications for participating as therapists in group therapy. My main concern in this book, therefore, is to develop an explanation of what we are doing together in a therapy group that draws fundamentally on dialectical process thinking and does not draw at all on the meta psychology of psychoanalysis or upon the notion of a system.
A key question may help to point to one of the main distinctions I will be trying to make in this book. What do you think human interaction accomplishes in psychologicalâsociological terms? One answer is that human interaction provides objects for drive discharge but also constrains that discharge, so shaping the individual psyche. Freud and most object relations theorists provide an answer along these lines. Another answer is that human interaction produces systems we call groups, organizations, cultures and societies in which individuals are parts of the systems they form. Systems thinking, including its incorporation into relational and inter-subjectivity psychoanalytic theories, provides an answer along these lines. A third answer is that in interacting, humans pattern further interaction between them. This is the answer provided by the kind of process theory I will be exploring.
The first two answers to the question are in no way contradictory and so can be combined to provide a single explanation of human interaction. They are not contradictory because both are built on the spatial metaphor of an inside and an outside. Both understand individual minds to be systems called âinternal worldsâ and both understand the social to be a system formed by individuals but external to them. Within the internal world of mind, process is understood as interaction between internal objects, or agencies producing a âwholeâ called âmindâ and this âwholeâ is often thought of as an illusion. Beneath this interaction it is assumed that there is a causal agency, namely âthe unconsciousâ. Outside of the internal world in the social sphere, process is understood as interaction between people to produce a system, which then affects them. This means that there is a causal agency above human interaction called social structure, culture, group mind, matrix, collective unconscious, and so on.
The third answer to the question posed above is incompatible with the other two because here interaction produces nothing above or below it, acting as a causal agency on it. Interaction produces only further interaction and is its own reflexive, self-referential cause. There is only process, no system at all. In fact there is no inside and outside. There is no âinternal worldâ and there is no social system.
It is at this point that some who have read preliminary drafts of this chapter have protested. Surely, even as we read these sentences we experience an âinternal worldâ. Surely we are experiencing this âinternal worldâ in the context of a social system of which we are parts. First, let me explain that I am in no way questioning our experience of individuality or our experience of social relations. Instead I am suggesting that it is possible to think about this experience in a different way. When I consider what I directly experience as my mind while I write these sentences, walk down the street, drive my car or engage in a conversation with others, what strikes me is this: all I can identify as my mind is an endless, silent conversation with myself. I experience my unique, individual mind not only as an endless stream of chatter but also as melodies I silently hum, images I privately view and rhythmic bodily feelings I am sometimes aware of. It seems that silent words, intertwined with other silent sounds, private images and feelings, all trigger each other in endless succession. Furthermore I am aware that I am only aware of some aspects of this endless activity while being unconscious of most aspects of it. I certainly do have very individual experiences and they certainly do seem to be unique to me in many respects. And what is striking about all this activity is precisely that it is activity, namely the activities of my body directed toward itself. When I think, I am talking to myself and when I feel, it is my body that is doing the feeling. The important point about an action, however, is that it is not inside anything. Talking is not inside the throat just as walking is not inside the legs. I can understand my experience of myself, then, as the activities of my body directed to itself and this in no way requires me to think of myself in an abstract way as having an âinternal world.â
However, we have clearly come to believe that thinking is in the mind and that the mind is an âinternal worldâ, which is somehow inside us. So how has this happened? Elias argued ([1939] 2000) that we came to experience ourselves as having a mind inside us in response to the slowly growing social pressures to hide particular affects such as aggression and sexuality and conceal certain bodily functions such as sex and discharging waste material. In other words, the sense of an internal world grew out of a need to hide what we really experience. The evolution of this way of experiencing ourselves was closely tied up with the need for greater individual self-control required by the evolution of increasingly complex and differentiated webs of relationships between people and the monopolization of violence by the state. The feeling we have of a mind inside ourselves is thus an illusion produced by social evolution. In Chapter 2 I will be exploring in more detail how this way of thinking and experiencing ourselves has evolved but here I simply want to make the point that it is possible to explain our experience of unique individual minds in terms of the direct, phenomenological experience of the activities of our bodies without any recourse to the abstract notion of an âinternal worldâ. As soon as one does this, it becomes clear that individual mind and social relating are the same processes of bodily action. While mind is silent, private interactions of a body with itself, social relating is vocal, public interactions of bodies with each other. Social is then understood as processes of bodily interaction and such an understanding has no need for the concept of system. I will be suggesting, then, an explanation that runs in terms of direct bodily experience without appealing to abstractions from that direct experience such as âsystemâ and âinternal world.â
It might be said that we have to continue thinking in terms of mind inside and society outside because this is how people of our time experience themselves. I am not arguing against ever using notions of inside and outside as metaphors when talking to people in a therapy group. What I am suggesting is that in seriously discussing what we are doing in a therapy group it may not be appropriate to carry on talking in metaphoric ways that are problematic. In the ensuing chapters I will be explaining why I think that talking in this way is problematic and I will be arguing that talking in terms of an inside and an outside is an abstraction from our direct experience of interacting with each other. I will be offering alternative ways of explaining what we are doing together in a therapy group without continuing to use the metaphor of inside and outside simply because it is so widespread.
At first it may appear that I am laboring a rather minor point. Does it really matter whether we start off explaining our experience of mind in terms of an âinternal worldâ or in terms of âprocesses of bodily activityâ? This book argues that it is profoundly important. Knowing and explaining is path-dependent. It matters greatly where one starts and which routes one takes because each step we take affects subsequent ones. What seems to be a minor fork in the path rapidly leads to a very different journey. I suggest that if you take the route of âinternal world,â you easily move to explanations of mind and social that abstract from direct experience and can become increasingly elaborate and implausible. The route of âprocesses of bodily activity,â however, avoids abstracting from direct experience of interaction between people and so develops different explanations. It is the purpose of this book to explore these differences through developing a process perspective.
The process perspective I will be taking is a temporal not a spatial one. From a temporal perspective, process means something quite different to its spatial meaning in psychoanalysis and systems thinking. In the spatial sense interaction is a process producing a system inside and a system outside as the âwholesâ of mind and society. In the temporal sense, however, process is not producing anything other than itself. Here, participation means the direct interaction between people, which is self-organizing processes in which pattern emerges, a central concept in the complexity sciences. People are participating with each other in their own interaction â they are not participating as parts in something outside of their direct interaction. The temporal notion of process is, therefore, completely incompatible with the spatial notions of psychoanalysis and systems thinking simply because in it there is no inside or outside at all. As members of Western society, we have indeed come to experience ourselves as individuals with psyches that are âinternal worldsâ and as parts of systems that make decisions and oppress us. However, as Elias argued, this is a consequence of the evolution of Western society. Our experience of having minds inside of us and systems outside of us is a social construction which we have come to universalize and this potentially clouds our thinking about individuals and groups.
Why the move to process thinking matters
Why does this distinction between psychoanalysis/systems thinking and temporal process thinking matter as far as group therapy is concerned? It matters because it points to two quite different foci of attention. If one assumes that the mind is an âinternal worldâ inside a person, then one focuses attention on internal objects and universal patterns of interaction between those objects. One thinks of individual and group processes in terms of innate universals such as infantile sexuality, the Oedipus complex, unconscious fantasies, and so on. As soon as one sees the notion of âinternal worldâ as simply a social construction produced in the last few hundred years of social evolution in the West, this way of thinking about therapy and therapy groups becomes problematic. If one assumes that mind and social are aspects of the same process of relating then one focuses attention on the direct, ordinary experience of relating to each other. A shift to the kind of process view I am suggesting then calls for a very different way of explaining what we are doing in a therapy group or in a therapy dyad for that matter. Shifts in thinking affect what we do together in ways that we cannot know in advance.
But why do we have to choose between the pro...
