Group Analytic Contexts, Issue 77, September 2017

Newsletter – Autumn 2017 133
with apparent respect to most explanations before they asked
questions which riled the speaker. Initially she had felt supported by
the way they questioned the certainties of politicians, managers,
psychiatrists and psychologists in the hospital - until they reframed her
own explanations as a series of questions. She had been surprised by
the prison warder who had volunteered to accompany criminals to the
hospital and terrorist camp and had seemed as if he was enjoying the
questions. He’d seemed less interested in defending the prisons than
had the politician. Was she less open than the warder? Was she
looking for the Visitors’ approval? She remembered the
disappointment that she experienced when her father took her
mother’s side. Where had that thought come from? It wasn’t that the
Visitors took anyone’s side – although their questions did seem to
redistribute power. Perhaps they were on the side of the powerless –
but not, strangely, on the side of victims – unless everyone was a
victim.
She noticed how many of the Visitors enquiries focused on
the interactions between people. But were interactions sufficiently
stable to sustain organizational and professional structures? In the
terrorist camp, this focus shifted to the interactions between beliefs,
behaviours, cultures and countries with scant consideration of national
boundaries. Was it just that the Visitors couldn’t tolerate certainties?
Surely knowledge was built up on things that were understood. Was it
possible to theorize – or think – if you didn’t ‘know’ anything?
Was it possible to think about everything? The Visitors
seemed doubtful as to whether any amount of training freed anyone
from a defensive propensity to locate difficulties in others.
Organizations that emphasized empathic relationships found
themselves self-reflecting in relation to the cruelty that had been
located in these meetings with terrorists and criminals. Reassuring and
kindly practitioners found themselves considering whether they could
work in more forensic settings – even when they doubted their
resilience for this kind of work. ‘Are cruelty and resilience personal
or social constructions? How is cruelty modified when a strand of
hope, however fragile, is responded to? Is personal resilience
experienced differently when social structures are thoughtfully
supportive rather than restrictively litigious?’
Some practitioners who had attempted to explain analytic
reserve to the Visitors, wondered whether the visitors were serious
when they were invited to explore their methods in the current setting.
Some found it difficult to explain how this reserve was linked to a
responsive parental figure. Practitioners, who were interested in