Thoughts On the 47th Foulkes Lecture
In ancient Greek as Archilochus would say
«Πολλ’ οίδ’ ἀλώπηξ, ἐχῖνος δέ έν, μέγα» *
Some people are detailed in everything they do, like the fox. They move on many levels, they see the world as it is; complex. Their thoughts are not concentrated into a concrete, complete and rigid idea or vision. While others are good at the one big vision they have, like the hedgehog. They are those who see their life and their relationship with the world through the prism of an integrated idea and basic concept that organizes and guides towards a vision.
* “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”
The languages the group analyst speaks are multiple. They respond to the need for constant translation, for constant repositioning in order to resonate with the monologue, dialogue and discourse of the group. And perhaps each time he becomes a hybrid of the fox and the hedgehog; knowing many but translating and speaking for one at a time. The language the conductor uses and the translation he chooses, create a new way of communicating and it is the way of the therapy. A mode of communication that allows and rather favours differentiation and diversity, somehow forcing reflection and conflict on ‘bastions’, on issues unconsciously “self-evident” both at a social level and at an interpersonal as well as personal level. It calls into question the super-ego concerning demands at all three levels and differentiates the individual from the ‘normality’ of the mass.
The 47th Foulkes Lecture makes me want to say a lot if I think as a fox, but as a hedgehog I would say one. What I think all the speakers including F. Dalal brought up. That the mind itself, our brain as human beings and its thousands of years of evolution, is a derivative of the unquenchable need or desire to communicate. The mind emerges in order to function as a transmitter and receiver of communication. (Dalal, 1998,54-55) So when the mind does not function as a transmitter or receiver it may begin to degenerate or eventually cease to exist.
The Schöningen Spears introduce us to rivalry, to conflict, to the war which is in a sense the end and with it the termination of the emergence of mind and communication; perhaps the war is also a communication by other means. War from the depths of the millennia as a communication and communicative legacy of the primordial hordes as phallic symbols of death.
The groups contain the war. We have experienced aggression and rage within groups therapeutic or non-therapeutic. But groups are called to exist and function themselves in the midst of wars. To operate in a warlike climate. War to be outside the group and come as an affirmation that the inside and the outside, the individual and society are one, the same. Whether the war climate is about regular bombs and bullets and death, or whether it is about economic warfare, cold war, or diplomatic warfare.
But the groups are there to listen, to be heard, to translate and interpret the needs for communication and recognition. To support and contain the Struggle for Recognition (A.Honneth) and the struggle for communication in an individual, interpersonal, and social context. In the Personal, the Dynamic and the Foundation Matrix.
The work of S.H.Foulkes may fall short in academic vigour. He retained the unstructured and endlessly incomplete free floating discussion and expression of ideas. But, the very robust theory would probably capture inadequately the nature of the group-analytic experience. Being free and open ended gives a perspective that seems to be lost when desires, hope, expectations, demands from oneself, from others, from whole societies, become concrete, very structured, and rigid. So much so that in order to become or continue to exist they need spears, not the sign-language of symbols.
MD, Psychiatrist, Group Analyst
Hellenic Institute for Group Analytic and Family Psychotherapy