Group Analytic Contexts, Issue 77, September 2017

Newsletter – Autumn 2017 59
intellectual. There are many reasons for liking groups. One might
be allowed to be vulnerable. To talk about what doesn’t work, to
question life. To share what it is like not to know.
In ordinary life, values can be different. The goals may be to
make money, be in control, have power, be seen to do the job well, to
be successful. Vulnerability is often seen as a weakness. Heaven help
the person sensitive enough to be brought down by overwork or over
performing with no place to admit defeat or hopelessness. I can feel
the relief of tension when in a group a person who has broken down
with the effort to stay on top, allows himself to admit his failing.
A supervisor once said of a training group: They just want to
turn it into a therapy group. Yes. This seems to me to be part of it.
What else are they going to do? Sit and tell each other how
competent/sorted they are or how much they understand the theory. If
that is the point, I have missed it.
The focus of the symposium was, of course, to look at what
could be done or understood about immigration and the refugee plight
– the crossing of borders. When all that is wanted is survival, there
may be no time for subtleties of connection, the vulnerability is
evident but as the author William Fiennes says:
‘The big themes are alive in the smallest detail.’
Di King
dikingblackbird@gmail.com