Group Analytic Contexts, Issue 77, September 2017

134 Group-Analytic Society International - Contexts
working with thoughtful patients most likely to benefit from their
expertise found themselves reflecting on the anxieties underpinning
this preference and being asked to consider the implications of
working in more turbulent and chaotic environments – adapting their
methods accordingly.
The curiosity of the Visitors was unrelenting. They seemed
driven to ask disturbing questions which led towards extreme
conclusions. It was as if they thought that theoretical dogma unadapted
in the face of difficult interactions was little more than cruelty.
Some therapists suspected that they viewed the absence of curiosity as
not dissimilar to genocide. It was pointed out that professional
organizations had to live within contemporary social parameters. The
Visitors questioned adaptations made in accord with social norms
rather than thoughtful explorations - as well as the cost to thinking
involved in successfully marketing such adaptations.
Their refusal to live in the real world reactivated the attention
of delegates who were hoping for some sort of spiritual revelations
from the Visitors. Hope re-emerged that the Visitors had some greater
purpose and perspective which might be considered to have a spiritual
dimension. Some representatives of humanity, who had been brought
up in fundamentalist religious traditions, thought that they might be
angels, devils, divine messengers or a sign of ‘the last days’. Others
wondered whether they were speaking about spiritual beliefs that had
been overlooked in a materialist society. It was true that the Visitors
showed an interest in the eternal in as much as they seemed to have no
notion of fixed points in time during which things could be evaluated.
Everything was fluid, historical, intergenerational – with the current
and personal never more than a flickering reflection of an interactional
infinity. Working compromises emerged out of explorations in which
considerations of merit seemed irrelevant. To some, the focus on
reflection and introspection was not dissimilar to meditation or prayer.
The difficulty was that because the visitors were so focused
on what they saw as integrating the whole picture, they progressively
alienated all the segments of it by frustrating individual alliances.
They spoke about developing connections but continually interrupted
them by their indiscriminate compassion and relentless curiosity.
Part VI will be in the December issue