Deep Communication and Language Games in Group Analysis
Presented at the 1st GASi Online Symposium “The Languages of Groups: the power to include and exclude”, 4th – 6th September 2020
Abstract
Freud’s interest in the mind allowed him to recognize, through clinical practice, a privileged way to access patients’ private lives: the word. Bion also believed that for a person to understand himself, others, and the world, it was essential to be a thinker, developed through the α function – alpha-betization or language. Therefore, it is essential to study more deeply the psychoanalytic and group analytic theoretical approach to language, more precisely, in our perspective, a considerable mystical conceptual legacy. Through Wittgenstein’s work (1953) a different angle is proposed, a fundamental change, especially with the conception of language as a human activity, linked to a certain understanding of the world (forms of life), and the idea that language is a public tool to understand private life. This author argues that the ability to know our most intimate lives, and the ability to communicate our experiences to others, in a clear and distinct way, is dependent on the way we handle language, in different language games, which reveal different patterns of intentions. Finally, the issues enunciated are investigated using clinical material from group sessions, applying the concept of language games to the analytic context, where the communication of mental states and emotional experiences is frequent.
Keywords: group-analysis, mystical, language-games, mentalization, deep-communication, intersubjectivity
Raising some critical questions about language
Tecne (τέχνη), in the ancient Greek sense, is a skill that provides a change from an adverse situation to a wished situation. Admitting this, it is possible to recognize that there are more technological jumps forward, in human history, and that language is one of those great human technological revolutions. Language through words, silences, expression of emotions and all aspects of a communication that moves beyond verbal, enables the continuous passage of testimony and the prediction of the future, rising exponentially the capacity for survival. Language enlarges not only knowledge but also mental life.
Dunbar’s (2009) investigation about the origins of language distinguishes two fundamental functions: transmitting information and social bonding.
“Without theory of mind to allow us to reconstruct the mental state of the speaker in particular, conversation would be very stilted, would be limited to simple factual exchanges, and would certainly lack the richness of modern human exchanges.”
Dunbar´s standpoint made us attentive to the following: is there a possibility that information transmission function is overestimated, and the standards found on this function keep on being applied to social bonding function? And if this happens can boost dysfunctions in communication and in human relations? The information transmission function of language requires a fundamental concern with information accuracy, in terms of true or false values, and the social bonding function has much more to do with constructing mental states, or mentalizing. Does a miscellaneous perception, about those functions, create difficulties in mental life? Sharing mental states between members of a community, through traffic or transactions of symbols, allows the comprehension of immanent states of mind, mental products, thoughts, and feelings. The need to communicate the inner world, or private experience outwards – to make it public – helped immensely to develop language, cultural exchange, and inscription into the consciences of others – intersubjectivity – into a remarkable human effort against mortality and forgetfulness. A tendency to encourage information transmitting function, minimizing social bonding function communications, or enforcing factual exchanges to serve functions of social bonding, can offer an interesting explanation to misunderstandings, paradoxical messages, or the establishment of ideologies. We think those questions to be worthy of deeper investigation.
The conceivable prominence on fact transmitting information function of language can be linked to a long traditional metaphysical stance, that supports an idealized and perfect connection of words with things, a legacy from St. Augustin (397-426). This conception of language, where the sign is something put in the place of something else – the symbol is instead of an absent object – invests language with a sort of power of revelation of the inner nature of things by a process of exegesis. Language understood through this implicit idea tends to instigate mystical viewpoints, sustaining that the symbol hides a meaning to be disclosed, and for that distinctive trait can induce an attitude of veneration.
The mystical conception of language in psychoanalysis
Freud’s interest in the theme of language appears early in his first writings. In “Psychical (or Mental) Treatment” (1890) he initiates the idea of the central role of language in treating psychopathology, approaching in an indistinct way the mind-body problem.
“Now we are also beginning to understand the “magic” of words. Is that words are the most important mediator of the influence that one man intends to exert on the other; at words are a good way of provoking soul changes in those to whom they are addressed, and for it no longer sounds cryptic to say that the magic of words can eliminate symptoms pathological, especially those that are based precisely on psychic states.”
“On aphasias” (1891) he clearly starts to disengage the physicalist approach, a strictly neurological point of view, initiating a truly psychological method. In is seminal work “Studies on Histeria” (1983-1985), with Breuer, he refers to the importance given to talking by his patient Anna O. when “she appropriately described this method, seriously, as a “Talking cure” (…)”
Freud introduces language as a necessary element for understanding the psychological and cultural dimension of the human being. The fundamental theoretical connection between symbolization and psychopathology is so powerful that implies all psychoanalytic structure. “Studies on Hysteria” has some of the pivotal ideas about this thesis:
“In other cases the connection is not so simple; exist only a symbolic relationship, so to speak, between the precipitating motive and the pathological phenomenon (…).”
“Thus, their spastic paralysis and anesthesia, different vision disorders and of hearing, neuralgia, coughing, tremor, etc., and finally his speech disorders were “removed through speech”.
Psychoanalysis sustains that symbolization is the evidence of psychic determinism, theorizing that all mental processes are not spontaneous but determined by unconscious or pre-existing mental complexes. It relies on the causality principle applied to psychic occurrences in which nothing happens by accidental or arbitrary means. This means that Freud defends mental causation. This creates a potential problem because the explanation of this thesis is not supported properly in epistemological terms. However, this paper does not have purpose to examine that issue.
Bion has a distinct perspective about language. Bion’s (1962) argument is that language emerges from the human relation (mother-baby). He introduces the terms alpha function, to designate the process to create meaning, like a chemical transformation as digestion, and out of raw unprocessed sensory data, which he called beta elements, is possible to obtain thinkable concepts (ideas). The mother’s reverie, her alpha function, personifies the ability to modify her child’s tensions and anxieties. The mother and the child form a thinking couple, which is the prototype of the thinking process, that continues developing throughout life. Language is born from this interaction of the thinking couple.
Although it’s possible to demark dissimilar standpoints about language – Freud’s intrapsychic versus Bion’s relational – it is possible to identify a convergence in the belief that language covers some transcendent meaning which is struggling to be apprehended. This can be referred to as an implicit acceptance in a mystical conception of language. In Freud´s view language discloses or hides the demands of the unconscious, in Bion’s work it reveals or obfuscates O (Absolute Reality). Therefore, we think it fundamental to consider seriously this matter and enlighten the poor awareness about this strong mystical influence that psychoanalytic theory is engaged on when it states to language. Consequently, we can allege that:
- Psychoanalytic field as an implicit assumption that language hides some transcendent meaning that ought to be investigated;
- Considerations about this matter, must be deeply studied in their epistemological aspects, to discourage ineffective theoretical concepts;
- Language as replacement of the “thing” by the symbol, and the conception that the symbol is pointing to the “thing “, as a fundamental idea, should be reviewed.
Wittgenstein’s explorations in psychoanalysis and his different angle about language
“Some questions “What is length?”, “What is length sense?”,” What is number one?” etc, cause us a mental embarrassment. We feel that to give them answers we should point to something and yet we feel that we cannot point anything.” (Wittgenstein, Blue Book)
Wittgenstein remained interested in Freud’s work till the moment he was aware that Freud angle on language had some troubles. Wittgenstein alerted that this angle could lead to dogmatism as follow:
“Suppose Taylor and I were walking by a river and Taylor stretches his arm and throws me into the water. When I ask him why he did that, he answers, “I was aiming for you to see something” while the psychoanalyst will say that Taylor hated me unconsciously.”
Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, 1966
Wittgenstein, in the second phase of his work Philosophical investigations (1953), understood that a symbol can not contain any kind of mystical or transcendent direction in itself, that could show meaning: instead, the direction, that allows the comprehension of meaning, is pointed by the mind of the speaker. Meaning cannot be found in words but in the intersubjective field. Following Wittgenstein, the Freudian method of interpretation, declared as capable of understanding the unconscious, can end up locking interpretation into rigid meanings, transforming multiple approaches into a doctrinal bias.
The psychoanalytic field needs to be aware about this matter. Language is our tool of work. If we understand badly the use of the tool, maybe we are at risk to perform an inadequate job. We think it is more appropriate to approach language as a public tool to communicate private states as Wittgenstein defends. It is also important to face language like an organism, with behaviour tendencies, moving and changing via mentalization. In the clinical practice it is more useful to focus on the practical uses of language instead of an idealized language.
Language Games
“For a large class of cases — though not for all — in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.”
Philosophical Investigations, section 43 , Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein’s seminal proposal is that meaning is founded in the language games that subjects play and where different points of view are placed. This thesis is profoundly connected with social skills, that enable the adoption of the perspective of the other, which is often seen as one of the key capacities to build a theory of mind (Sellars, 1956). His concept of games of language maintains that there´s a strong dependency on the way we handle language, facing different patterns of intentions. His conception reflects the socially shared use of signs, of signifying and representing among the cultural environment in which the language game occurs. Wittgenstein began to look at the elements of subjectivity in language, and denoting that without those elements words will be a bunch of non-sense paraphernalia, because the relation between the symbol and the object is not intrinsic to the sign, but only gains meaning in the specific game of language played by the states of mind of the players. There’s no mystical connection that links words to objects. Language is co-construction between acts, practices and intersubjectivity.
This thesis is accompanied by studies that link the emergence of language in human evolution with social play, set since Bateson (1951). Currently the perception of the potential of social play in generating shared fields of reference, in which players demonstrate mutual awareness through structured signals, monitoring the attention of others (Ragir & Savage-Rumbaugh, 2009) has a strong acceptance. Also Whiten (1999) has built the concept of deep social mind, characterized by a distinctively human capacity to read or to infer the mental states of others, while reciprocally enabling others to read one’s own mental states. Likewise, Tomasello (1999) perceives the sharing of attention, and of intention, and the acquiring information not only from its physical environment, but also from its social environment, as fundamental for the differences between humans and other species.
Language and Life Forms
“(And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.”
Philosophical investigations, section 18, Wittgenstein
Borges in his tale the Babel Library (1944) understood language as the source of life or death of a culture. In this tale he builds an image of what language itself can be: an infinite labyrinth of paradoxes, an intricate plot, an intertextuality crossed by mythological and biblical allusions, historical, philosophical, literary, mathematical, theological references and paraphrases of texts, of real or imaginary writers, based on existing and non-existent sources and archives, annulling boundaries between dream and reality, in a multiplication of universal and infinite senses. Language conveys thoughts, and like roads, can direct us to a city or nowhere, like an hallucination. The Wittgenstein’s conception of form of life bring us this organic texture of language, that is magnificently described in Babel Library.
How to do things with words
On countless occasions, linguists, and philosophers in general, thought that statements only serve to describe objects, and therefore were true or false. Austin´s work, How to do Things with words (1955/1962), and his Speech Act Theory, established a strong disagreement with this perspective. He portrayed his argument with a distinction that every speech act has: a locutionary, an illocutionary, and a perlocutionary aspect. The locutionary attribute of speech is its propositional content; the illocutionary attribute of speech is the intention of the speaker and the perlocutionary attribute of a speech act is the effect upon the listener, intended or not. Austin also distinguished two types of statements:
- Constant statements or those that describe or report a state of things, and therefore, are subject to the true or false standard, example “The fly fell into the soup”
- Performative statements or those that do not describe, report, or verify anything at all, and therefore are not subject to true or false standard (they are not true or false), more precisely, when someone speaks in the first-person perspective “I love you”
The social bonding function of language gains here a clear shape, allowing to understand language in several dimensions, that can be found if we are in the right angle.
Games of Language and Group analysis: some components
It is time to do a pilot application of the concept of Games of Language. Our first step is to assert that the performative statements are the focus in analysis. Performative sentences have meaning by the implicit directions of action, by speech acts. In psychoanalytic and group analytic practice the game of language, that is played, focus in speech acts such as affirming, promising, asking, suggesting, refusing, enabling to understand the directions pointed by the mind of the speaker.
The second step is to detect which game the patient is engaged in, because certain games of language are not immediately recognizable. For example, someone says “I need space”. The group analyst must examine what game or language is being played to perceive the meaning (This sentence as fact transmitting or a social bonding function? Then we can differentiate if it is a game of desire – for autonomy – or fact transmitting that expresses a search for a bigger room). Several of these games are miscellaneous (transference is an example) so the group analyst should reorder, relocate, and offer a clarifying interpretation to co-construct meaning. Another patient says, “it will be all right”. Likewise, the interpretation is within the social bonding function of language, and the patient is probably playing the confronting game and not the game of rational facts, as in “2+2=4”.
Ultimately, analytic therapy works also with several levels of intentionality, or mentalizing skills. Following Dunbar (2008) humans have a fifth order intentionality limit. This implies that a remarkable level of complexity in comprehension of other minds and worlds. It also means that the games that can be played can be numerous. It is also noticeable that the competencies on intentionality tasks decreased during psychopathological conditions, declining the density of the games, and possibly escalating the miscellaneous communications.
Games of Language and Group analysis: some applications
1st Vignette (group since April, 2018, twice-weekly)
(…) “G … what does handle something fragile mean? Because at the bottom there is a fragile object here, that you must be careful to handle … When you handle it, you must be careful …with the film …
P – exactly … what was more confusing at the time … is like it was a definite thing … if it goes wrong there was no remedy … there is no recovery … that an additional stress in the operation…instead of having my hands light… I was all nervous… tense… I could not make it well… I realize that I need to be calm and have light hands… to do things
G – How could it get lighter?
(pause)
A– I think I am a person with a very good mood but I am also a person who is always complaining a lot and gets disturbed with small things … today for example I was very upset because I have nothing to do at work and it was terrible… I was so bored that I started to write poems, I wrote three poems in 15 minutes…
(…)
F – I was levitating …
(laughs)
G – so here we are talking about light things and here is F levitating…”
In these communications we can identify the game “light and fragile things”, a game of language brought by P to this group, several sessions ago. The game “light and fragile things”, has to do with a previous communication of P, that brought an image of himself in a dark chamber, trying to handle a tape of a movie to reveal it, with an experience of massive anxiety, because he´s afraid to fail, and destroy the film forever. A continues the game by expressing the fragility of her light mood, and the anxiety of experiencing the void. F keeps playing the game, in a psychosomatic style, showing by action of words the light and distant experience of herself by “levitating”.
This game of language “light and fragile things” enables the elements of the group to be in a meaningful playful game, being closer to each other in their most deep fears: to die, being meaningless, and abandoned
P deep fear, that brought in him to analysis, of dying of the same disease as his mother, without an experience of being truly alive (To destroy the tape forever).
A deep fear of being meaningless and her anxious search for something with meaning to feel also alive (Bored and writing poems in 15 minutes).
F deep fear of being lost by abandon, floating in vacuum or empty spaces, because of her experiences of detachment by her family (Like she is floating like a balloon with no strings attached and without suffering because she’s disconnected).
2nd Vignette
“T– I want to know how to kill a father…
F – My god…! (pause)… I was trying… I cannot get the word out, but I think this is the most powerful help request that came up here in the group…like WOW… Can we ask V? Because she put something in the food…in the drink… of her father??
V– (Laughter) … otoceril or whatever
G – F, you built an important bridge… what did you feel at the time, V?
(pause)
V – I wanted to punish him in some way…
“V – I was 7 … I was so angry, rage and hatred … Because he punished me…it was so unfair … I went to the kitchen looking for something … some medicine … I remember of that … I do not remember if it was initially for me…yes…but then I change my mind… and I thought he was the one that was bad…and he deserves to be punished…
G – (turning to T) Do you also want to hurt those who hurt you?
T – no …I only want to feel less…”
In these communications the game “hurting the father” is identifiable, a game of language previously brought, several sessions ago, by V to this group. In a previous communication V brought a word-drawing of her, in childhood, poisoning her father, an episode that ended in an indisposition of the father, mother, and neighbours because they drink a harmless ear´s medicine. T continues in this session, this earlier game, by asking “How to kill a father” because it is possible to play the game, in this group, as game of intentions, without being factual.
The whole group understands the rules of this game of intentions, completely different from the rules of the fact game of language: “He killed his father yesterday”. The possibility of playing this game and explore the images that the words can bring to the group, is supported because the whole group is playing the game “hurting the father” with the same rules. If there was an element, or even the analyst, that could not play this game, it will be impossible to explore the meaning of the deep experience of being hurt by the father, and the desire to hurt him.
3rd Vignette
Lobo Antunes’ inaugural work: Elephant memory (1979) provides us with a totally different game of language, in a context of group analysis. Antonio Lobo Antunes is a Portuguese writer who narrates, in this book, the subjective experience of a group analysis session, where feelings of loneliness, anguish of abandonment, violent emotions and an oscillation, between cold and tender feelings in relationships, are revealed through his internal dialogues.
In this perspective we can observe his internal experience of being in the group, through a totally different standpoint from the later vignettes.
This work illustrates a capacity of a fifth order intentionality, or of a super-mentalizer (Bateman, A., Fonagy, P. & Allen, J., 2008), because throughout this narrative it is possible to observe the standpoint of the analysand, the multiple perspective of the other members of the group, and at the same time the context of a literature work. What is also perceptible is the absence of an analyst’s creative mind contrasting with the formidable mind of the analysand/writer.
“(…) a guy walks here to be domesticated, captured, brainless, transformed into a secular Saint for two thousand escudos a month. What a f* wash of “cornadura” is this, twisted like an old man with rheumatism, lumbago, sciatica, parrot beaks and toothache, the soul of a mutt whining on the way home, and yet I come back, I come back punctually every other day to be beaten again or experience total indifference and no response to my concrete anguish, no idea about how to get out of this or at least to see some open air up there (…). (…)I get angry like Alice’s White Rabbit and I demand that those I appreciate enter the uniform of the Mad Hatter: perhaps that way we can all play croquet with the Queen of Cups, cut the daily life of the Daily Life with a single blow, and jump to the other side of the mirror together. (…) The third man in the group, who wore glasses and looked like Emilio and the Detectives, explained that he would be pleased if his daughter died to receive more attention from his wife, which provoked various murmurs of indignation in the audience.
– F¨*, said the man that was sleeping, shaking himself in his chair.
– Seriously, the first one insisted. There are moments when I cannot wait to pour a boiling coffee into the baby crib (…) Maybe we all want to kill the people we love.
The group analyst started to wind the clock and the doctor felt like Alice in the assembly of animals presided over by the Dodo: what strange internal mechanics governs all this, he thought, and what underground thread unites disconnected phrases and gives them a sense and a density that I don’t know?”
The super mentalizer analysand/writer game is multiple dimensional. The capacity to play with the transmitting information and social bonding function of language and create meaning by swapping between constant statements and performance statements (Austin, 1962) with sentences like: “(…) a guy walks here to be domesticated, captured, brainless, transformed into a secular Saint for two thousand escudos a month.” (…) “and yet I come back, I come back punctually every other day”, is amazing. This precious testimony of Lobo Antunes’, about a session of Group analysis, recorded in literary work, where several self-perspectives (the patient, the doctor, the writer) allows to observe how a rare multiple language game occurs.
Conclusion
In this paper we try to distinguish two fundamental functions of language: in transmitting information and social bonding. Also identified a mystical conception of language in psychoanalysis and attempts to clear up some potential problems about this framework and concepts to theory, technical, practice of psychoanalysis and group analysis. It proposed a different angle, originated in Wittgenstein´s work, showing that the symbol can not contain any kind of mystical or transcendent direction, that leads to meaning. Meaning must be searched for in the social use of signs, in signifying and representing among a cultural environment, in which the language games occur. This framework supports that language is a tool to express games of intentions, of a form of life. Also, we selected Austin´s work because it demonstrates how certain statements are not meant to describe anything, but to perform actions, or in another way, to engage or to interact with others or ourselves. Finally, we presented three vignettes to explore this angle or approach.
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Rita Sousa Lobo
Sociedade portuguesa de Grupanálise e Psicoterapia Analítica de Grupo
sousalobo.rita@gmail.com