Group Analytic Contexts, Issue 77, September 2017

128 Group-Analytic Society International - Contexts
The Visitors
A Psy-Fi Tale
By Mike Tait
Part V
"… the same may be said of all professions. They are all
conspiracies against the laity; and I do not suggest that the
medical conspiracy is either better or worse than the military
conspiracy, the legal conspiracy, the sacerdotal conspiracy, the
pedagogic conspiracy, the royal and aristocratic conspiracy, the
literary and artistic conspiracy, and the innumerable industrial,
commercial, and financial conspiracies, from the trade unions to
the great exchanges, which make up the huge conflict which we
call society. But it is less suspected." [George Bernard Shaw, ‘The
Doctor’s Dilemma.’]
Anxieties fluctuated concerning the Visitors’ identity. Were they true
liberals? Were they validating psycho-analytic concepts? Did they
have a concept of individual freedom? Were they a communistic or
even symbiotic life form? Did they have separate minds - or draw
some distinctions between themselves? Had they had so many
conversations over the eons that, like an old married couple, they
understood what each other were thinking? How did they resolve
conflict? Did they need to? Did they have impulses - and therefore
know about frustration? Did they communicate with each other when
human beings weren’t present? The difficulty was that their replies to
enquiries were hard to remember. Most of those present felt that
somehow they had been left with a new set of questions. ‘How
symbiotic or independent was any human being? What was a mind?
What kind of separation was ever possible? Was conflict ever resolved
or did the foci of tension continually shift – if one remained open to
evolving dynamics rather than retreating into the illusion of arrival?’
There was usually some sense of relief when the Visitors
appeared to appreciate areas of human thought – although they were
rarely ideas that were considered mainstream. They seemed to
understand the ancient Athenian idea that retribution and punishment
harmed the soul of the litigator. When they heard that early
psychoanalysis had focused on developing the capacity to reflect - at
the expense not just of impulsivity but also of harshly judgemental
aspects of self – the visitors seemed curious as to the difficulties in
creating social structures that encapsulated such ideas. They gave