Group-Analytic Contexts, Issue 80, June 2018

Newsletter – Summer 2018 79
questions concerning the nature of resilience lingered in her mind. But
how much therapy would it take?
Did infantile disappointments still influence her selections -
despite justifications which she could easily produce if she was
questioned? Or, had she refused to conduct this group because she was
disappointed that the Visitors’ had seemed to understand her
philosophy but not her practice – at a time when her profession was
already beleaguered? Her disappointment was irrational; the Visitors
didn’t overtly support anyone; but it was unusual for successful
professionals to be under as much scrutiny as more problematic
individuals.
She revisited familiar scripts. Boundaries protected
vulnerable people. Agreement about the rules helped participants feel
safe. The therapist had made clear that, in her profession, boundaries
were necessary – both within and around the group. Too much damage
had been done when they became blurred. Boundary violations were
understood in relation to such concepts as omnipotence, abuse, acting
out, power differentials and familial re-enactments. The Visitors had
asked how often these concepts became vents for disapproval and
curtailed conversation - rather than exploring interactions in all their
complexity.
She worried that engaging with the Visitors questions
concerning historical and cultural variations, or the unique trajectories
of the evolution of individuals - whether in relation to greed, sex or
violence - risked colluding with self-gratifying rationalizations. It was
inevitable that professional boundaries excluded unacceptable
behaviour, unwanted experience and extremes of all kinds, even if the
unwanted then remained located in current social receptacles for
badness and madness. She had felt her shoulders tense and her
boundaries sharpen during these enquiries.
When the Visitors were more active, they seemed to
notice each time this happened and respond to the line of her shoulders
rather than to her words. They had asked about the derivations of
words like: boundary, inclusion, exclusion, impingement,
infringement and transgression – asking questions which left the
communicants thinking more about their own derivations – about the
link between the mind that expressed with the expression chosen.
They enquired how ‘bound’ [which also meant ‘to tie tightly’] had
become, in ‘boundary’, used to denote exclusion. They became
puzzled that the evolution of words no longer appeared part of
everyday thinking - as if current usage was meaningful without
historical perspective.