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Chapter Five - A Beginning – Page 180
modes tend to predominate when there is disruption of the group’s engagement with its
primary task, likely around Sticky Moments.
The group seem to struggle to represent their experience to Judi and I, and we seem to
struggle to represent it back to them in a form which they can use. Nonetheless, perhaps
because this difficulty can be spoken about, the group seem able to get into ‘Work’
mode (particularly in parts of the session where there is discussion of clinical material),
rather than lapsing into one or other of the ‘Basic Assumptions’.
In this particular session, the members of the group bring the difficulty of the third hour,
as if it may have just begun to impact on some of them, particularly as the course ends.
If I had to characterise this group in relation to others we have taught, then I think I
would note the relatively greater differential distribution of experience and aptitude, and
again the relatively greater extent of acting out rather than acting in.
Regarding ‘acting out’ and ‘acting in’, Rycroft (1968) defines acting out as ‘the
substitution of acting for remembering’. This privileges the cathartic and classical
versions of the process of psychoanalysis, which do not take account of the value both
of interpretations in action (Stadter, 1996), and also of the spontaneous expressions of a
dynamic matrix that can value ‘mistakes’ such as the various forms of parapraxis noted
by Freud (1914) and others. Acting in is a way of seeing action that becomes available
for analysis in the group (or in an individual therapy) and therefore remembering.
Perhaps what is significant about this extract, or rather this beginning is that a lot of
thought and feeling is brought into the session, even if it is not possible to address and
process this directly or fully. Even though Frances does not make any sense of her