Group-Analytic Contexts, Issue 81, September 2018

60 Group-Analytic Society International - Contexts
to mention the questions which followed. In the psychiatric hospital,
the questions had punctuated the dogmatism associated with current
practices. The manager was uncertain what role she could return to
with any confidence…. A murderer, provoked into violence by
memories of abandonment, had been steadied by a current interaction
provoking sadness and more hopeful memories – and altering how he
was viewed in the group. Then the terrorist had been displaced as the
location of evil by an unexpected impulse to protect - which the
manager had apparently relinquished. For several group members,
internal conflicts were no longer externalized, albeit in search of
opponents to condemn or victims to protect. Uncertainty, particularly
not knowing who the Visitors were, had kept everyone on edge.
Nothing could be taken for granted. Roles, despite their professional
trappings, had come to seem primarily ways of keeping people apart.
Could something new really be created between people?
What would happen if they all lived on the same street and
continued to meet regularly? Would it be a bit like going to church –
without the familiar rituals or the Supreme Being – unless they
considered the Visitors in such a light? Would they develop rituals
and lose their current uncertainties, or would anxieties just keep
evolving into other anxieties? On a practical level, the warder couldn’t
imagine the wealthier members of the group being willing to accept a
similar standard of living to the poorer members – let alone the
disruptions of living next to unpredictable and poorly socialized
individuals. He could imagine the reaction if he suggested such a thing
to his family. They would say he was bringing work home and that
such things should be kept separate.
How deep were the changes? There was hope and gratitude
in Jason’s eyes. Nobody could think that hope – or gratitude –
outweighed murder. Nobody said that aloud. The Visitors would
expand the metaphor until society shared the weight.
Chapter VI / IV
Motivation
‘I said, ‘Why not tell him that you know that when he steals he is not
wanting the things that he steals but he is looking for something that
he has a right to; that he is making a claim on his mother and father
because he feels deprived of their love.’ I told her [the mother] to use
a language which he [the son] could understand.’
[From ‘The Anti-Social Tendency,’ 1956, D.W. Winnicott]