Group-Analytic Contexts, Issue 81, September 2018

58 Group-Analytic Society International - Contexts
The Visitors
A Psy-Fi Tale
By Mike Tait
Part IX
Chapter VI / III
Space
‘The mind is not a thing which exists but a series of events, moving
and proceeding all the time.’
[‘The Group as a Matrix of the Individual’s mental Life’, in SH
Foulkes Selected Papers: Psychoanalysis and Group Analysis, Karnac,
1990, p. 224]
What was it that the Visitors had asked about space? When they had
begun, most of those present had thought that they might be talking
about intergalactic matters and about to reveal information about
where they had come from. The warder had quickly twigged that they
were asking about something else – the space between people. That
was when they’d asked whether research involved exploring the
forces that powered volcanoes - or only if their discharges could be
blocked - a feature of the thinking about crime that they’d observed.
They then discovered that volcanic soil could be fertile which led to a
further expansion of the metaphor. Were they imagining that crime
performed a creative social function?
Their questions expanded everything - particularly terms
they regarded as pejorative. Judicial officials and medical staff had
found themselves being described as perpetrators of sentencing and
treatment - with the implication that prisoners and patients might be
seen as victims. Delegates then reluctantly decided against the use of
these words. The difficulty was that without them, explanations took
so much longer. It became difficult to find a location for any crime,
psychiatric illness – or act of terrorism – everything seemed to hover
uncertainly in the space between people. It was becoming clearer that
this was the place that the Visitors line of questioning identified as the
logical location of judicial action and treatment.
Why had there been no introductions? What point were the
Visitors making? Why blame the Visitors? They could have all
introduced themselves – but they hadn’t. What difference would it
have made? The warder didn’t mind too much. He doubted whether
being known by his name would have contributed much to his sense