A Tribute to Adele Mittwoch

Adele & Co. Norway

Many of you will no doubt remember the wonderful Adele Mittwoch, a lady of small stature and large spirit, whose unobtrusive work behind the scenes, often well beyond the call of duty, helped to keep the London headquarters of group analysis afloat for many years. 

Adele stays most vividly in my memory for the deadpan way in which she would launch truths, like arrows, into any group which was fortunate enough to have her as a member. Before training as a group analyst she had been a scientist, and she applied scientific principles to group analysis in a distinctively Adelian way, drawing on her personal experiences to reach conclusions which others were then left to verify or refute.

Not long ago, I came across this manuscript of hers buried in my archives, of a talk she had given to a group analytic symposium in Oxford. A post-it note from her to me, dated 1990, refers to it as her ‘parvum opus’, a typically self-deprecating, drily humorous expression. As far as I am aware the paper never saw the light of day as a published article and she was content merely to deliver it to one of the groups she trusted, namely the Group Analytic Society Symposium.

Given Adele’s devotion to group analysis I don’t think she would have minded the paper’s appearance in Contexts, although she might have modestly protested that it did not merit publication. I would disagree, of course. Anyway, here it is in its entirety, as a tribute to her memory.

Harold Behr

Groups: Benign or Malignant?
A Look into My Past
by Adele Mittwoch

In the days before the Institute of Group Analysis ran its Qualifying Course, I spent two and a half years in a supervision seminar led by Patrick de Maré. We were a keen lot of students meeting weekly in term time, and almost right through the holiday periods. One day Pat suggested that the way we felt in groups, whether comfortable or anxious, was influenced by our early history in groups. We all felt comfortable enough in this seminar group and we talked freely about our past experiences.

It was a valuable exercise. I could feel at ease in groups or I could feel wary, and the way I felt made sense in the light of my past experiences. What I recalled then is relevant in the framework of this symposium. I will therefore give you a short break from theory and talk about myself.

I come from a stable, two parent family, with two sisters close to me in age. The nuclear family was neurotic, but shall we say, “good enough”. There was ample contact with the wider family and a circle of friends. From the age of six, for four years, I attended a cosy little private school. Mrs Mottek taught us throughout, in teaching groups of five to six children. We had school on three half-days a week and learnt the lot. What could be more sheltered and secure?

It was a big step when at ten, I transferred to a grammar type of school, a Gymnasium, where moreover, I was the only Jewish girl in my form. This was Nazi Germany, and it was difficult. Nevertheless, things in Berlin were not yet as bad as elsewhere in Germany, and particularly in this school, where I was amongst girls from cultured backgrounds. I managed to make friends. In time, though, more and more of my classmates joined the Nazi youth movement and then gave up contact with me. I had to be careful to hide my anger. Sometimes, when I heard them talk about their adventures, I also had to hide, dare I say it, a little envy; such is the pull of a group. All in all, it was a time when I learned to integrate well enough, whilst also being outside the group. I learned about my longing to be fully inside, about the danger of trusting, about other people’s fickleness and my own potential fickleness. I remember one occasion, when on my way home from school, I was held up by a tank parade. I stood there, a small child amongst the crowd, not quite knowing what a tank might do, and I was scared.

My next important memory of a crowd is a happy one, namely, standing with a friend outside Buckingham Palace on VE day. I should explain to people from abroad: VE day was in 1945, a public holiday to celebrate victory in Europe. This may be hard for our German colleagues, those old enough to remember the day. Forgive me, but it was the most wonderful day in this country. We were squashed outside the palace and yet no-one showed any trace of fear. The Royal family kept appearing on the balcony, but the young princesses felt out of it up there waving to us, and even they were allowed down to mingle with the throngs. This was a mammoth group that everyone trusted. A great danger was behind us and we could fully surrender to the shared jubilation, to an oceanic ecstasy.

I move on to 1954, when Billy Graham was in London, having enormous success with his evangelical crusade. A colleague of mine, a devout Christian, urged everyone to go. I did not need much persuasion, although I had no intention of getting converted. I was still in my former incarnation of scientist, and yet eager to discover what it was about this man and the many thousands, who not only went to listen to him, but came away having joined his religious movement. I sat in the packed Haringey Arena listening intently, but found nothing of interest in Billy Graham’s sermon. I had heard that women fell for him, and I was young and susceptible, and yet as a man he left me cold. The sermon was over and I felt disappointed, thinking that I would never unlock the secret of his magnetism. We were invited to come forward to pledge ourselves. No-one went. The organ started to play almost imperceptibly. One man stepped forward. Was he planted? The organ rose in volume and in emotional appeal. Two people went. A few more, a trickle. As the organ worked its way up to a rousing crescendo, to a heart rending fortissimo, the trickle turned into a surge – and as the seats around me emptied, I had the greatest difficulty staying glued to my seat.

I recently told this story to a senior group analyst, who thought that I had been lucky; he actually went forward to pledge himself. Was it luck, or was it my experience in the 1930’s? I was tempted and nearly succumbed to the contagious attraction of the large group, but I did not allow myself to be swayed a hundred per cent.

In the same vein, I want to talk about a film that I saw three years later, in 1957, Sidney Lumet’s “Twelve Angry Men”. I found the film exciting and moving. The men were shut into a hot, stuffy jury-room, unable to reach the required unanimous verdict. Eleven of them were convinced of a boy’s guilt, only one man, played by Henry Fonda, doubted the evidence. This man managed to hold out against the others in adverse circumstances, managed to withstand their anger, until one by one, their conviction crumbled and they came round to his point of view.

My saga continues with an incident that took place about ten years later in a group that I attended at the same time as the supervision seminar. The group, convened under the title of, “Therapy for Therapists” was conducted by Foulkes and Harold Kaye. One day, during a session, I sneezed. “You have sneezed”, mused Earl Hopper, and the group devoted itself to the task of uncovering the deeper meaning of that sneeze. I had an idea: “There was someone in the bible”, I said, “who had died, and who sneezed as he was brought back to life”. Everyone had forgotten who it was until someone recalled that it was Lazarus. This clicked with Hélène Home, James Home’s wife: “Ah yes, Lazarus”, she said, and I echoed, “Ah yes, Lazarus”. The group turned to other things, and the sneeze was forgotten. At the end of the session, as I left the group room, thinking of nothing a phrase shot through my mind, “The son of the Shunamite”. I knew then that we had all been wrong. It was this young lad, the son of the Shunamite, who sneezed seven times after he had been given the kiss of life by the prophet, Elisha, a story in Kings (Kings II 4: 35), whilst Lazarus, at his resurrection, never sneezed at all as told in the book of John (John 11: 44).

What had happened gave me a jolt. I had been steadfast in the Billy Graham gathering of twelve and a half thousand strangers. It was different in this small group of eight. We knew one another well, the matrix was benign. I abandoned my caution and let myself be led astray by two others. At this point of time, I had read Freud’s (1921) paper on Group Psychology, and the incident brought home to me the truth, first stated by Le Bon, that the individual, who becomes merged in a group, loses his intellectual ability and his power of criticism.

Some four years later, the first batch of IGA graduates met for a reunion. I talked about the final session of my training group at St. George’s Hospital, that had run for the duration of these four years. We had prepared for the ending of the group over a whole year and the atmosphere on this last day was charged with emotion. Half-way through the session, the door opened and George came in. This man, unable to go through with it, unable to bear the pain of separation, had stopped coming five weeks ago, and had not responded to my efforts to coax him back. His appearance now was quite unexpected and I had tears rolling down my face. One of my colleagues at the reunion commented that I must have trusted my group to be able to cry. Yes, I had trusted this group.

Is it then that I see small groups as benign and large groups with a potential for malignancy, except on very special occasions such as a victory celebration or a Beethoven concert? Well, obviously a large group can more easily get out of hand than a small group under the watchful eye of the conductor. But I would not trust certain small groups, such as our committees in London. And I have trusted the matrix in here enough to read this paper. Moreover, I must have sensed in advance of Oxford that the large group matrix would be sufficiently benign for me to give a personal talk. Here again, personal experience counts. I would not open my mouth in an Oxford or Cambridge Union debate because I know that I would get shot down if I were not brilliant. By contrast, I have always found that large groups in our group-analytic network are more tolerant, so that I am not usually afraid to say what I want to say.

To sum up: the landmarks of my past experience determine whether I trust or mistrust the group matrix, and my degree of trust in each situation will depend on where I am and when.

Adele Mittwoch