Group-Analytic Contexts, Issue 80, June 2018

Newsletter – Summer 2018 81
oblivious to the dangers? The therapist recognized her tendency to
diagnose behaviour that made her feel uncomfortable – or of which
she felt a little envious - and attempted to quieten that reflex. But, she
had always liked categories. When she was much younger, she
remembered teaching her siblings the names of things. When she
didn’t know the name of a plant or animal, the child who would later
become a therapist, had investigated meticulously until the name was
uncovered. In adult life this took her to long forgotten articles. Her
siblings had been willing listeners. Was this what she looked for in her
selection of clientele?
She had grown up quickly: the intelligent child of busy
parents. Her parents could never understand why she felt she needed
therapy – which they clearly regarded as self-indulgent. Under
questioning by her 40 year-old daughter, training to be a therapist, her
mother had told her that she’d been a happy child. That grated.
Milestones had been normal – as had the family. No traumas. Her
mother couldn’t understand why she would ask such questions. Her
teachers would have said that she was the perfect pupil: quiet and
studious. In therapy, she’d spent hours talking about the anger she felt
in relation to her mother’s emotional insensitivity and self-absorption.
Her husband was more sensitive but often pre-occupied by his writing.
Now that their youngest daughter had left home, the home they had
made together felt empty. Were the boundaries that she eloquently
advocated a way of fending off a deepening sense of invisibility?
Would she disappear without a frame around her?
The Visitors had remained silent. She wasn’t clear why she
had grown fonder of the Visitors as they were, as far as she could see,
practicing the worst kind of therapy – doing nothing. They had set up
the group so she held them responsible if anything went wrong – not
the randomly appointed conductor – although it was hard to know
whether any of the Visitors’ behaviour was random. After all, the
fraudster had been the first to share what was on his mind when he’d
talked about Christmas. He’d set the ball rolling. The little he said had
seemed just as helpful as her theoretically informed interventions. It
was his initiative that had humanized the politician.
Might individuality be discovered as much in the
understanding of similarities as in the affirmation of the boundaries
between people? Did identities flow separately or within a river whose
waters were continuously intermingling? How would social practices
change if the focus was on the understanding of the nature of those
intermingling waters? These were not new thoughts but - each time
she looked out at her companions they felt new. Was individuality a