A Sparkle of Green!
A TREE GROUP
In this article I would like to put into words my experience of working in a local community group caring for trees and to think of it from a group analytic perspective. I will look at how I came to be engaged with this group and say something about its meaning for me now. I will begin with what I think formed and drew me towards caring for trees, how it worked and what I think I learn from it both personally and as a group analyst.
WHAT DREW ME
It was a growing recognition that the natural world is in danger due to a lack of appreciation of the human dependence hence the exploitation of it. On a personal level it was through experiencing pollution in cities that I travelled to where I found myself needing to escape to the countryside for fresh air. The smell of diesel and petrol became natural in the built up areas I was in. I remember visiting a pristine area in the foothills of large mountains in Pakistan. In such a beautiful setting there was litter everywhere I looked at on the trail that people walked on. This was made worse by the fact that there was signage asking to not to litter the area. I got into an argument with someone and felt furious as I was unable to get my point across. I thought, surely if you care for the area it will be even better for you. I was left feeling despondent but angry too.
I grew up in a rural area of Ireland in the foothills of the blanket bog in the Sperrin mountains. On a small farm we didn’t think much about trees, it was cattle, hay and silage that was prioritized for financial reasons. The treescape, in many places scarce, was in the background. Trees were often cut down to provide a ‘better view’ of the landscape from people’s homes. When you cut the tree down there is wood, it becomes useful then, for posts or for firewood. It is only useful when it is needed for people.
Once when travelling in Southern Italy I found myself amongst cornfields that I experienced as both a quest to belong somewhere in warmth and in harmony, but, it being so far from home, it also left me with a forlorn sense. In South Asia I noted how the landscape there differed in comparison to the landscape at home with its often arid flat and yellow beauty. The dry rock and land made me want to water it. It held my attention and on reflection I think I was looking for connection to my home – inner landscape. How it was different and the same. Engaging in this new nature that surrounded me in its closeness, I felt excited. A longing to be home perhaps in some primordial sense or a longing to belong or where I didn’t feel excluded (Einhorn 2023).
In these travels I experienced, on reflection a ‘longing for home’ more than I could ever find whilst at home. That may sound confusing, but I think the foreign landscape brought me up tight as to what is/was dislocated within. Being formed by it, for me the soft green and sometimes boggy fields of Ireland; what was it then that when in a foreign land that was dry and dusty, that brought me closer to myself. I do not know. What I do know is that it brought me closer to what I love and will describe later. With the utter delight and joy of being in the dry dusty hot climate with wonderful Indian yellow sunset evenings, I also longed for the cooler, even wet fresh air of my home landscape and homescape. I longed to belong (Schlapobersky 2015).
I have often thought of how we are formed by our landscape. John O Donoghue, a poet, priest and philosopher writes delightfully about the Connemara rock landscape and its spiritual influence on people. He wrote of how the Celtic imagination articulated the inner friendship which embraces nature and human as one. The dualism that separates was alien to them. (O’ Donohue 1997)
BEGINNINGS INTO ACTION
My return from traveling I am sure left me more in tune with the landscape at home too, particularly noticing the damage and neglect in urban spaces where I lived in London. What brought that awareness up short in the first weeks after returning was being confronted with a dead neglected young tree in the green space across the road in full view from my front window. I felt compelled to see that space turned into something living, lush and green. I am sure that the outer neglect here chimed with inner neglect. My desire to turn that space across the road from death and neglect I think was not out of ultraism or doing good, but was what I needed too. That was to nurture that part of myself as much as the green space needed to be nurtured. There was no difference here in the inner and outer landscape; they chimed with each other. I felt frustrated and probably helpless and angry at the neglect in front of me. From this though I began to recognize a problem and possible solution.
By chance or not, at the same time my local authority where I lived was setting up a ‘tree warden’ scheme for local people to become active in caring for trees. The Tree Warden scheme is a national organization working with local authorities and run by the Tree Council in UK that was set up in 1974 to encourage tree planting.
I remember how excited I felt that there could be a possibility to plant a tree as for some years I had been thinking that I had never had but wanted to. I could also do something about that neglected tree. I became alive to knowing there was opportunity for change. Could this be a parallel with how we think about our work in helping prepare people to join therapy groups.
I think what I am talking about here is akin to life instinct, as always in relationship to, or the antithesis to the death instinct Freud (1920). The deadening I felt and witnessed looking at the dead neglected young tree, I believe dimmed the excitement, or life force I experienced when abroad just before. That excitement with its energy or volition drove me to resist giving in to the deadening, but to remain alive in my veins and heart and live with hope for the future. It was there, however that I needed to connect with others to do something about all of this deadening feeling about nature. Without the group, without others, we could not have achieved anything to do with caring for trees, maybe ourselves.
DISCUSSION
The planet is at great risk of overheating to an extent that it will become unlivable in for the human race. The degree of this continues to be incremental. Every increment has new climate consequences. Year after year records are reached of increased heat. The notion of tipping point when there will be no return remains round the corner in our minds however closer it is getting. The capacity for disavowal is enormous writes the psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe (2021). She argues that finding ways to take greater care of the planet requires us to stop colluding with what she describes as exceptionalism, a rigid psychological mind-set. She links it with neo liberal politics driving a culture of ‘no care’. The Exceptionalist is one who; lives in an idealised version of self, is entitled to have whatever they want, and uses omnipotent thinking to avoid any inner discomfort, guilt or shame from holding this position (Weintrobe 2021). I find this helpful to make sense of the damage done to the climate through human action, as we are confronted with what has been done, and, about what we could do collectively, individually and politically.
Taking these ideas in account, however long we remain in the position of disavowal may depend on what we can tolerate ourselves to see in the first instance, but in the second instance, there may be no choice in what we become forced to witness. This could mean losing our place or foothold on what secures us to our place in the world. As for most ‘natural’ disasters it is the poor who suffer disproportionately. Mass migration to more northern climes is a factor in world political tensions. Newcomers not being welcomed that risks increasing ideas of superiority over others and possibly racist attitudes, in particular when people feel threatened from their own sense of space and place.
How to live in a group is what mattered to Foulkes. Finding our place in relation to others is what group analysis attends to in transforming idealized aspects of ourselves into a more social self (Burkitt 1991). The social permeates us to the core Foulkes (1964). He warns against abstracting the individual from the social. The idea of the matrix in group analysis as that of being connected with others in various forms is central and makes vision of our interconnectedness.
I wonder if, in the climate emergency, the human historical biological connection to plant life is a factor in our denial of the threat to us as we need to deny the possibility of our annihilation. Does it pull us back from something we glimpse as threatening? In the last few years there is increasing attention paid to the fear or worry especially in young people about the climate crisis becoming known as climate anxiety. Younger people who will witness the planet well into this century and beyond. Their social unconscious stretches that far.
In Richard Powers Novel ‘The Overstory’ the botany student Patricia Westerford wanted to start her first book by stating that:
‘You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes…’
I love this as it states both a basic beauty and a fact. In the novel her work is disavowed by the established botany world with her idea that trees communicate with each other for their own survival and protect each other through various fungi. Obviously her character is fictional, but the words are not fiction as is established now with the recognition of the wood wide web, that is changing the way we think about plants and forests.
For centuries, fungi were widely held to be harmful to plants, parasites that cause disease and dysfunction. More recently, it has become understood that certain kinds of common fungi exist in subtle symbiosis with plants, bringing about not infection but connection (Mac Farlane 2016). These fungi send out tubules, which infiltrate the soil and weave into the tips of plant roots at a cellular level. Roots and fungi combine to form what is called a mycorrhiza: itself a growing-together of the Greek words for fungus (mykós) and root (riza). This is how individual plants are linked to one another in a complex and collaborative structure called the Wood Wide Web.
When I first heard this term there was already in my mind the word in group analysis I am sure any group analyst new to this will also have thought – the matrix! Like humans, plants too compete. Native plants in UK and Ireland have been reduced significantly in the past 70 years according to a report out by the Plant Atlas March 2023. For the first time invasive (a botanical term) plants outnumber native species. This is a worrying sign as it impacts on bird and other animal life that depend on native species. The problem being is that it impacts on the eco system that enables food to grow and which in its balance provides a climate for our survival. When this is threatened the risks are enormous.
Just this week (Mar 20th 2023) the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) delivered their ‘final warning’ on the climate crisis. Rising gas emissions are pushing the world to the brink of irrevocable damage. Swift and dramatic action can avert this but it will need co-operation amongst leading national states in the world who are currently eyeing each other up in the current tension in the war in Ukraine (The Guardian March 20th 2023). If we begin to consider that the damage done to the planet is caused by human action there emerges an enormous task, even to accept, never mind overcome what we can and have to do about it. Could, through recognizing our interconnectedness to the inanimate and plant life help us develop outsight, as collective citizenship (De Mare 1991).
OUR TREE GROUP
The Tree Warden scheme started with a series of teaching days on the subject of care for trees. This was for one year on a monthly basis. There I learnt about the nurturing needed to help trees grow healthy. After the teaching part of our induction was over we needed to group ourselves into particular tasks. This was facilitated by a gentle tree officer whom working with, I felt able to energise my own thoughts and creativity. For me, this was about seeing living things grow. I would never have assumed I could have a say in what type of tree to plant in a public space. I was emboldened and it was exciting to be able to do this. That young neglected tree couldn’t be revived, but there could be new life in its place.
In the forming group of tree wardens, about 5 of us to start with, we got to know each other a little through activities like planting whips, or helping clear a copse from invasive plants threatening the life of some trees. We needed to depend on each other as we were new in learning so much. It was through the adventure and being outside that was different for most of us who worked mostly indoors that felt good. It was in that first year when there were proposals for some tree planting that I boldly suggested the space where I saw that earlier neglect. A group of trees were planted in that same space!
As a group we became more confident and led ourselves when the tree officer was not present. Being more autonomous as a group led to some normal differences of opinion in how we would continue with our activities. Around this time there was an offer to meet with local authority representatives to draw up outcome measures to help guide our volunteering. Others including myself, felt that our group was growing organically and that it was the informally of it that was at its heart. Losing that I think we feared would turn our group more like a ‘corporate’ type group. In any case, it created a division that led to a split. I felt determined to continue with how we were working. Through a good relationship with our tree officer this was possible. A number of volunteers however continued as the official tree wardens.
I wonder now if we were worried about our survival as a group that the organic aspect of how we experienced it could get harmed or destroyed. My free association here is about the poisoning of plant and animal life throughout the world with the aim of making even greater profits. That early split, now 20 years ago, meant we could no longer remain officially as ‘tree wardens’ as the ‘formal group’ maintained this name. We continued the work on the ground literally. Our task – to plant, preserve and protect trees was becoming more defined within our matrix. Having a secure relationship with our council tree officer we continued to grow, finding a new name ‘The Tree Musketeers’. A joke name at first that has forever stuck.
FURTHER DISCUSSION
I wonder if our desire to be closer to nature reveals a dislocation from it. Nature surrounds us but we often feel apart from it. Is this because it gets commoditized and then experienced as something apart? For example, in London it is expensive to visit Kew gardens, which was once taken from the community and ‘owned’ by the aristocracy. The dislocation is depriving, that then heightens our quest for connection to nature – to ourselves. Thornton and Corbett (2014) write of the dislocation embedded in all immigration. I am talking specifically here about the human separation from nature as embedded in our being, which I think parallels to separation from one’s country or any separation that may be traumatic.
The quest then to be closer to nature must bring our attention span to the urgency of the need to protect and heal the planet. This, in comparison to exploitation, where some make even more money in pursuing natural resources for fossil fuels that in turn gives power of sorts. What may be forgotten here is in how we are nature itself, and as humans evolved from it or with it as in Westerford’s statement above.
I want to think of our relationship to nature as in figure and ground gestalt idea that Foulkes took up, (Foulkes 1971) in terms of our dependence on it. We cannot live good enough or healthy lives if we do not take account of the health of planet earth which is our ground! When we feel out of place, or estranged, we suffer as a symptom of un-connectedness with another part of ourselves, or – our nature. To be in harmony with one’s nature you might think. (any better)?
Engrossed in today’s capitalist and materialist world that is full of messages about what we ought or should own. I think this must trigger our longings maybe natural or normal in themselves for more, which we engage with or not at various levels. Social media now brings that right into our pockets all through the day and night. It tells us that fulfillment and increased happiness will be realised just round the corner. Does this corrupt our longing in a way that distracts us from the world we live in? Could Foulkes’ (1948) basic law of group dynamics, in which the group can help reinforce each other’s ‘normal reactions and wear down the neurotic part’, or in Weintrobes’s examples, the Exceptionalist, in drawing us back into being more connected to our social being in harmony in the world.
OUR TREE GROUP CONTINUED
Having a sense of freedom and informality made our work enjoyable however hard and demanding it could be. This included ensuring that volunteers were kept occupied and knew what they were doing. Having a look out to reduce the possibility of untoward events and with a culture that everyone brought something valuable, as we were in bringing ourselves and our time to these activities. We did not have meetings as we planned our activities over a cup of tea or in the pub after our activities. Sometimes we joked about ourselves as a ‘disorganization who were organized! It nevertheless depended on a great deal of cooperation and trust within the group. We had now grown in size to being a core group of about ten people with an ever-growing number of volunteers who would attend in particular on tree planting days, when we always got much larger numbers taking part.
Over time as a group our confidence grew and this drove its momentum and creativity. Some volunteers took greater interest in wider bio diversity life like bee keeping, wild life, insects, birds, food growing and in how these are interlinked. My main interest lies in changing and growing the treescape in local parks. I think this was fueled through my growing attachment to several of these spaces. Through talking with local interested people we envisage where a tree could be planted and which species of tree to plant that fits or blends in with the landscape around it.
About seven years into the group we were growing trees from seed and these began to be planted out in the parks. We were becoming of age! Around this time, I visited Munich and in that city I discovered that the ‘English garden’ there was partly landscaped by an English man who was not a trained arborist and where it got its name from!
As we were gaining credit as a local green group and becoming recognized locally, we became more conscious as to how we wanted to be seen, or represented externally and to the local community. We had some disagreements about how we do this. Growing in size, we also needed to balance our ambitions with the reality of what we could achieve with our number of volunteers. I used to experience that however welcoming we were to new volunteers; they often didn’t remain as long-term volunteers. I wondered if we unknowingly excluded newcomers that could affect change we didn’t like, or would unsettle the balance we had achieved, I don’t know.
Issues or challenges that present themselves occasionally were and are complaints from people who living close by who see trees as obstructions to their view. Or the idea that in a common, trees traditionally do not grow so shouldn’t be planted there. Conversations are needed to engage in thinking about what is best for the environment and what suits the locality. This communication needs sensitive handling as it is in being open and involving everyone that a community can be more alive through both the agreements and disagreements. We needed at times to ensure we were not being arrogant thinking everyone should think as we do about environmental issues.
EXTINCTION REBELLION INFLUENCE
With the advent of Extinction Rebellion protests there has been a sea change in recent years following a greater acknowledgement and social awareness that climate heating is real and not a left wing protest or conspiracy. This appears to have resulted in local people becoming more active as our volunteer rate increased by about 200% in the year after Extinction Rebellion protests begun. Thankfully, many of these people, of all ages continue to volunteer with a lot more of them leading on projects within our organisation now.
When we became a charity it meant greater formal structures within the group were needed. It meant change sometimes not that comfortable following years of relative informality. Expanding numbers of volunteers brought pressure to have better arrangements to organise volunteers. We were now working not as one main team but with a number of smaller teams in different green spaces. It is interesting to see how individuals take on roles according to where their skills lay and how much learning there is through this. Enabling and encouraging this skill share is what made and makes it work better.
More recently with changes in council staff a new head of department was keen to promote our work. It was seen that what we were achieving met some council objectives in their green agenda. Then followed the pressure to plant more trees! This was almost the reverse of our earlier struggle when sometimes we felt that we were appealing to the local authority for permission to plant more trees. This recognition from the local authority felt like a real achievement for our group. Becoming closer to the formality of the local council could risk the loss of our earlier spontaneity, but this at present does not appear to be an issue. Maybe we have matured!
Sometimes now, it is our group who say no’ to planting more trees as we need to be careful not to plant beyond our capacity. We have to be realistic about the amount of trees that we plant that enables such a high survival rate that we have. It has always been our practice to plant only the number of trees that we can fully follow up with in terms of tree care in their first few years. That for me, stemmed deeply from my experience, years ago when the young dead tree had died from neglect, not from having lived a full life.
CONCLUSION
Today our group has grown in number. The next generation of volunteers are active in taking the work forward in various directions. This is within the overall aim we started with, but with wider activities that work towards more sustainable ways of being in relationship to our natural world. It involves liaison with a growing number of organisations associated with tree care and bio diversity. And with local people becoming interested and more active in promoting the use of green spaces for a whole number of activities.
There is now a link volunteer to many of our larger greenspaces. That person usually lives local who will then coordinate any activities on or around the space. They work with the aim of also involving locals not active in the tree group, but who can get involved in a variety of activities that inspires their interest. This might be an example of a dynamic community group matrix, that through working with their local natural space, anchors the self to their local community.
There is something about this whole experience that is about healing in small incremental stages, healing in the broad sense, that is the natural world in harmony with our own bodily health. Sue Stuart-Smith, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist writes about the well healed gardened mind; the title of her book, on how profoundly our wellbeing can be affected through contact with the natural world (Stuart-Smith 2020).
The saying that ‘the best time to plant a tree was 50 years ago’, to mean that we don’t get to experience the tree in full, I disagree with. I think of this work in relationship to my work as a group analyst. Psychotherapy is not overnight cure and change may not be visible or easily seen, but it is in the doing the work that we tend to find fulfilling. Likewise, it is seeing the small trees grow, that we planted that gives incredible satisfaction and a joy about being alive with them. People love to hear about the stories of trees growing and the human contact there has been in enabling this to happen. I think this is linked with a desire to connect with the earth/ourselves to overcome mental estrangement.
For me, this experience had made the world somewhat brighter if not only a greater sparkle of green!
References
Burkitt, I. (1991) ‘Power Relations, Interdependencies and civilized Personality’ Chpt 7 in Phillips, K. (ed) Social Selves. London: Sage, pp163 – 188.
De Maré, (1991) Patrick B., Piper, Robin, Thompson, Sheila Dialogue, Chapter 3 IN Koinonia: from Hate, through Dialogue, to Culture in the Large Group, London, Karnac, pp. 41 – 74
Einhorn S (2023) Chapter 18 Belonging in Group Analytic Therapists at Work. Routledge.
Foulkes, S. H. (1948) Introduction to Group Analytic Psychotherapy. London Heinemann.
Foulkes S H (1964) Therapeutic Group Analysis. London Allen and Unwin.
Foulkes, S. H. (1971) The Group as Matrix of the Individual’s Mental Life, Chapter 22 in Selected Papers, Psychoanalysis and Group Analysis, Karnac.
Freud (1920) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Chapter in A General Selection from the works of Sigmund Freud Ed, J Rickman (1953) Hogarth Press.
Macfarlane, R. The Secrets of the Wood Wide Web Aug 7th 2016. The New Yorker.
O’ Donohue J. (2000) Conamara Blues Harper Perennial.
O’ Donohue, J. (1997) Anam Cara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World. Bantam Books.
Power, R. The Overstory (2018) Vintage.
Plant Atlas 2020 (published in 2023) Pub Princeton University Press.
Schlapobersky, J. (2015) On Making a Home Amongst Strangers; The Paradox of Group Psychotherapy pp 433 -446 Foulkes Lecture. Group Analysis Vol 48. 4.
Stuart-Smith, S. (2020) The Well Gardened Mind: Rediscovering Nature in the Modern World. William Collins.
Thornton, C and Corbett, A (2014) Hitting Home: Irish Identity and Psychotherapy in the UK. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 30 (3)
Weintrobe S (2021) Psychological roots of the Climate Crisis: Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare. Bloomsbury.
Eugene’s psychotherapy practice is in both the public and private sphere. His work includes a social histories group with Irish men at ICAP (Irish Counselling and Psychotherapy), as a training group analyst in Albania, and as a supervisor on the IGA diploma course. His other practice is with individuals.
His background is in mental health nursing, community and statutory social work with children and families. He worked in Pakistan as a training manager overseeing development of group counselling in a drugs detoxification unit. More recent work was in a crisis psychotherapy service in the NHS for nearly two decades.
Eugene is interested in finding ways to approach those supposedly hard to reach that addresses social and financial under privilege. He sits in the International courses committee at IGA.