Report of the Event (online): From Crowds to Communities in Dialogue. The Large Group in Contemporary Group Analysis
Event organized by IL CERCHIO- Italian Association of Group Analysis
Date: 12 March 2022 9,40 am – 5,10 pm (CET)
Schedule
09:40 – 10:00 Entering participants
Chair: A. D’Auria
10:10 – 10:35 Lecture: C. Penna – From Crowds to Constructed Large Groups as Spaces for Collective Self-Reflection
10:35 – 11:00 Lecture: E. Hopper – Convening a Large Group in Group Analysis: Two Core Principles
11:00 – 11:15 Break
11:15 – 12:45 Large Group (E. Hopper, C. Penna, S. Negro, G. Losito)
12:45 – 13:15 Break
13:15 – 14:45 Large Group (E. Hopper, C. Penna, S. Negro, G. Losito)
14:45 – 16:15 Lunch Break
16:15 – 16:35 Review Session: Group of Conductors
16:35 – 17:00 Discussion
17:00 – 17:10 Conclusion
PREMISE
This contribution describes the workshop “From Crowds to Communities in Dialogue. The Large Group in Contemporary Group Analysis”, held on 12 March 2022 online (zoom platform), promoted by Il Cerchio – Italian Association of Group Analysis, with the patronage of GASi, Coirag, University of Perugia and Città del Sole Onlus.
It is articulated as a multi-level narrative that we hope will allow the reader to enter in a live and direct way both in the lived experience and in the subsequent re-elaboration by the staff, inside and outside the group.
It consists of an introduction to the works, the two lectures, the report of the two large group sessions, a work of re-elaboration and theoretical connection and, in closing, the comments of the staff members.
As often happens in large groups, immersion and surfacing, regression and progression, thought and emotion, shadows and lights alternate. Enjoy the reading.
Presentation of the event
Alfonso D’Auria
Welcome everyone. First of all, I want to thank our two speakers Earl Hopper from London and Carla Penna from Rio de Janeiro for being here with us today. Two colleagues from GASI who are internationally renowned in the psychoanalytic and group analytic fields, and experts of the Large Group.
In particular, I would like to point out that the book by Carla Penna (2022) is being published precisely concerning the topic we will deal with today. From Crowds to the Dynamics of Large Groups: Historical, Theoretical and Practical Considerations, London: Routledge for The New International Library of Group Analysis series edited by Earl Hopper.
Today’s theme is therefore the Large Group, structured, that is, organized with setting rules and with a staff convening it. This device, if well conducted, can be a powerful and very useful tool to allow dialogue between a large number of people, from different communities to which they belong, such as professional, cultural and national ones, a bit like we are today. We are well aware, however, that putting together a large number of people, with the indication of being able to speak freely, does not lead to a fluid communication that is maintained on a rational level as a foregone conclusion, as usually happens in a small group, but rather often it leads to a dimension of communicative chaos, associated with very regressive emotional states. As De Marè (1975, 1991) said, if the purpose of the small group is to get in touch with emotions, that of the Large Group is to learn to think.
In IL CERCHIO we have a long experience in Large Groups, thanks to the two founding members of IL CERCHIO: Alice von Platen and Leonardo Ancona.
Ancona is the one who translated Kreeger’s book “The Large Group – Dynamics and Therapy” into Italian in 1978 and von Platen is the one who started, in 1991 in Rome, the experiential workshop of the Analytic Large Group, a unique experience in its genre carried on for twenty years.
The Analytic Large Group is an experiential workshop of seven ninety-minute sessions by Large Group, four on the first day (two in the morning and two in the afternoon) and three in the morning of the second day. The motivation for the choice of this setting is linked to the model of block training, which Von Platen proposed on the occasion of the creation of a group analysis training school in Germany.
Von Platen (1996) thought that organizing a marathon of only large group sessions, not included in larger events (workshops, symposia, congresses), could help in understanding group dynamics in general and in particular the psychosocial dynamics of large groups “with the aim of developing adequate skills to manage uncontrollable and dangerous emotions, such as the tendency of the masses to blindly follow leaders in perverse and destructive actions” that past and present history, unfortunately, teaches us.
Among the main purposes of an Analytic Large Group, there are:
- learning to think and to dominate overly destructive emotions (Von Platen, 1996, 2003);
- going through a controlled psychotic state to arrive at a creative thought (Ancona, 2002).
Keeping in mind this structure of the Analytic Large Group, we can consider the Large Group as the basic unit of measurement, on which today we will have the opportunity to reflect and experiment together with our two distinguished speakers.
Setting
Before starting, I ask you to pay attention and follow these simple but fundamental indications.
First of all, always keep the microphone off, except when you decide to speak, and remember to turn off the microphone after speaking.
To help the interpreters, Claudia Marchetti and Vera Panno, we ask you to speak slowly.
During the reports of Penna and Hopper (which will be recorded), it will not be possible to intervene.
After the talks, at 11:15, we will have a break of 15 minutes and then at 11:30 we start with the first session of the Large Group.
The two Large Group sessions will not be recorded and the chat will be disabled.
The conveners of the Large Group will be Earl Hopper, Carla Penna, Giovanni Losito and Simona Negro. There will also be three observers: Vanna De Candia, Maria Cristina Ferro and Giuseppina De Fino.
There will be a half-hour break between the two Large Group sessions.
After the two Large Group sessions, we will have a break of an hour and a half and upon return there will be a review session in which the group of conveners, for 20 minutes, will share their reflections on the process and the content that emerged in the group and, for another 25 minutes, there will be a free discussion.
The last 10 minutes of the event will be dedicated to greetings and allow for a gradual exit of the participants.
Good work to all of us and now I pass the word to Carla Penna
About Observers
In the Italian tradition of the large group promoted by Alice von Platen and Leonardo Ancona, the presence of a variable number of silent observers, from two upwards, is foreseen, related to the number of conductors, to have a plurality of external points of view concerning the group process in progress.
Observers are entrusted with the arduous task of noting, writing, and “recording” the multitude of (apparently) disconnected interventions, the dreams and dynamics that are activated within the large group, but also what happens in para-communication terms (laughter, silences, displacements, exits/entrances, etc.), as well as their own emotional and countertransference experiences.
The role of the observer is not only passive and receptive, but it plays an active role in supporting the group of conductors during the breaks between one session and another of re-elaboration in the post group.
The term “observe” comes from the Latin ob-servare, from which emerges the meaning of “look carefully” but also the broader meaning of “preserve, maintain”. Originally servus, servitor, meant “he who contains”.
It could be said that the observer is located in a transitional space between inside and outside concerning the position of the conductors and the ongoing group process.
The subsequent transcription of the sessions allows you to retrace what happened in the group, to detect emerging issues and dynamics and represents an opportunity for meta-reflection for all the staff, as well as continuous learning from experience.
References
Ancona L. (2002), Pragmatica clinica del gruppo mediano e grande. In: Di Maria F., Lo Verso G., edited by, Gruppi. Metodi e Strumenti. Milano: Raffaello Cortina.
De Marè P. (1975). La strategia dei Gruppi Allargati. In: Kreeger L., edited by, The Large Group. Dynamics and Therapy. London: Constable (trad. it.: Il Gruppo Allargato. Roma: Armando Editore, 1978).
De Mare, P., Piper, R. and Thompson, S. (1991) Koinonia. London: Karnac Books.
Penna C. (2022), From Crowds to the Dynamics of Large Groups: Historical, Theoretical and Practical Considerations, Routledge, London
Von Platen Ricciardi A. (1996). The Setting of the Large Analytic Group. Group Analysis, 29: 485-489
Von Platen Ricciardi A. (2003). Gruppoanalisi e Gruppo Analitico Allargato nel lavoro e nelle istituzioni: In: Ancona L., Giordano M., Guerra G., Patella A. e von Platen A., Antipigmalione. Gruppoanalisi e rivoluzione nei processi formativi, Franco Angeli, Milano
FROM CROWDS TO CONSTRUCTED LARGE GROUPS AS SPACES FOR COLLECTIVE SELF-REFLECTION
Carla Penna
The dichotomies that have shaped modern thinking over the last centuries transformed the idea of the individual into the keystone of Western societies. Norbert Elias (1939, 1984, 2001) sought to escape the polarities that oppose individual and society by developing more interdependent ways of thinking about their relations. Foulkes’s ground-breaking work was influenced by Elias’s sociology and was marked, from the beginning, by the intrinsic relationality of human beings. Foulkes (1948) apprehended that the individuals depend on the social restrictions of their surrounding world, as well as on the conditions and claims of the community, the group in which they live. Individuals cannot be separated from their context “except by special abstraction” (Foulkes, 1975a, p. 252). However, the idea of the individual remains rooted in Western thought, especially in the current neoliberal outlook. In this sense, we remain trapped in the illusory nature of group formations portrayed by Freud (1921).
Contemporaneity is giving space to new contours in Western societies. Recently in the political scene, things changed dramatically and polarization between the Right and the Left divided people. Fundamentalist thinking (Hopper, 2020, 2022) and populist nationalism (Fukuyama, 2018) are also triggering massification processes in association with national identities. Today, we are experiencing difficult forms of coexistence, new experiences of failed dependency (Hopper, 2003a, 2019), as well as inadequate leadership. In addition, the emergence of Covid-19 foreshadows unknown perspectives for the twenty-first century. Therefore, after the spreading of World War II anxiety – for fear of the return of authoritarianism – and the strong mobilization of people for democratic causes, in the current political arena, fundamentalist thinking and “states of exception” (Agamben, 2005) are again challenging the locus of human beings. Facing the unknown and haunted by twentieth-century traumatic experiences (Hopper, 2003a), we see the Russian-Ukrainian war unfolding, a disconcerting and frightening reality for contemporary crowds.
After the French Revolution, Hippolyte Taine’s historiography called attention to the modern phenomenon of crowds (Van Ginneken, 1992). In 1827, Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi/The Betrothedseem to have been the first novel to portray modern crowds (Nye, 1995). In the last decade of the nineteenth century, when deep socioeconomic and political transformations (such as anarchism and socialism) were taking place, the unconventional behaviour and the potential threat of mobs and crowds drew the attention of scholars interested in deciphering their psychology. In 1891, in Italy, in the post-Risorgimento, Scipio Sighele – a disciple of Enrico Ferri under the influence of Lombroso’s criminology – investigated criminal crowds and prison systems. His work was shaped by social Darwinism and positivism, which aimed to bring social laws into harmony with biological laws. Independently, but still, in a conservative bias, French researchers such as Gabriel Tarde (1890) and Gustave Le Bon (1895) delved into the study of crowd psychology (Penna, 2022).
The characterization of crowds as irrational, savage and pathological dominated scholarly thinking in the nineteenth century. Le Bon was the most important of these scholars. His works were read by Mussolini and Hitler, and by democrats like De Gaulle. Le Bon’s talent seemed to be linked to his ability to capture and translate into words the spirit of his time, that is, the social situation, fears and aspirations characteristic of the late nineteenth century. Le Bon imported from Salpêtrière and Nancy’s medicine concepts such as imitation, suggestion, hypnosis and contagion to discuss crowd psychology. He was convinced that the nineteenth century heralded the advent of a new era – the era of crowds (Moscovici, 1985).
Just after World War I, Freud wrote Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), transforming the views that used to give importance to the hypnotic-suggestive features of crowds and replacing them with unconscious processes, identifications, libidinal ties, and ideal agencies. Freud’s mass psychology foreshadowed the way unscrupulous leaders would influence and rule the masses. The concerns with collective behaviour thus converted into the need to find ways to control and govern the masses (Moscovici, 1985). Thus, what was feared in the nineteenth century began to be manipulated, controlled in the twentieth century. From this perspective, it seemed that the solution for mass rebellion depended mainly on the knowledge of its psychology, and twentieth-century socio-political movements and leadership concerns pinned all their hopes on this investigation (Penna, 2022).
The first half of the twentieth century was shaped by two world wars. In England, the Northfield experiments became the cradle of different approaches to group work such as group analysis, group relations, therapeutic communities, social and cultural psychiatry. Later, the transformative context of the 1960s and 1970s conferred a new Zeitgeist for the development of group work in England. The impetus inherited from the Northfield experiments combined with new sociocultural perspectives favoured innovations in healthcare that led to advances in group work, especially the development of large groups. In 1965, at Halliwick Hospital, Lionel Kreeger and Patrick de Maré established a new culture in ward and community meetings through work in groups and, in 1966, started to convene large groups. In 1971, the Institute of Group Analysis in London began to host large-group experiences and, in the following year, both included large-group sessions in the program of the Second Symposium on Group Analysis.
In its early days, large-group work was underdeveloped and not integrated into one single perspective. The first large-group cohort in group analysis was working in various hospital settings and was influenced by a mixture of Freudian, Kleinian, Bionian, and Foulkesian theoretical perspectives (Wilke, 2003a). However, whereas the group relations field, grounded in Bionian group theories, built a more unified frame for their work, in group analysis there never was just one single approach to large-group work. Despite their differences, these pioneers cherished a kind of “group analytical” spirit.
In 1975, Kreeger edited the first collection of articles on large groups. The eclecticism of the contributions is fascinating; however, they reveal a “confusion” concerning the definition of a large group, its purpose, its optimal size, the ecology of the setting, the role of the convenor, as well as its therapeutic value. By that time, Kreeger and de Maré were already developing rivalry for leadership and an ambivalent relationship in their theoretical approach (Jacobs, 1973). These controversies, present in Kreeger’s first book, continue to these days, eliciting ambivalence and theoretical disagreements in group analysis. In fact, from its early days, large-group work has been shaped by Foulkes’s ambivalence regarding large group potential (Foulkes, 1975b, p. 56; Wilke, 2003a) and by different theoretical perspectives on the large-group approach.
The group analytic large-group explores the psychodynamics of artificially created large groups in training institutes, conferences, and workshops. This enables us to conduct the study of their psychodynamics as if in a laboratory. Constructed large groups offer opportunities for the study of regression, primary processes and early phases of unconscious life, expanding the comprehension that “common defences against mental pain, of denial, splitting and projection into others, have immense social consequences when used by whole groups of individuals” (Main, 1975, p. 63). Participation in large groups refers to “self-study” (Turquet, 1975, p. 90), enabling persons to learn from experience about socially unconscious processes co-created through intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal interactions.
Inspired by ancient Greek amphitheatres, de Maré glimpsed large-group interactions. This idea has to do with the principle of Koinonia, which refers to the development of impersonal fellowship, a culture of togetherness and communion. A large group offers a structure or a medium for linking the inner world with sociocultural dimensions in which interpersonal relationships take place. In this direction, large-group work points to the possibility of humanizing society and developing citizenship through dialogue (de Maré, Piper & Thompson, 1991).
This presentation is based on large-group work in England; however, its development varies in different countries. In Italy, influenced by training in London, Germany, and by Turquet’s work, Alice von Platen (1996) and other colleagues, such as Leonardo Ancona, developed a series of two-day workshop with seven large-group sessions. Recently, experiences on Analytic Large Group (ALG)/Gruppo Allargato Analitico (GAA) discussed by D’Auria & Negro (2016) have brought several reflections on the work in large groups. One of them is connected to the role of convener(s). In Italy, we observe the tendency to use more than two conveners and the presence of observers as we are experiencing in this workshop. These differences are worth being transculturally and socially unconsciously explored.
Large groups trigger strong emotions and frustrate libidinal needs by eliciting primitive and psychotic mechanisms as Kreeger, Turquet, Hopper, and others have investigated. However, and almost paradoxically, large-group work creates safe spaces for collective self-reflection, transforming the unconscious collective processes that had previously been displayed as thoughtless behaviour in nineteenth-century crowds or blind followership in the twentieth-century totalitarian masses into new forms of thinking and dialogue for persons and communities. Large-group work is a theoretical and technical research tool to broaden the contemporary understanding of the psychodynamics of persons when gathered in large numbers.
Through large-group work, it is possible to get in contact with what was socially unconsciously transmitted, denied and encapsulated, facilitating the working through of collective traumas and intergroup conflicts in the context of different tripartite matrices. (Nitzgen & Hopper, 2017). Large groups also offer the opportunity to observe the fourth basic assumption of Incohesion and to examine the dynamics of organisations (Hopper, 2003a, 2012, 2019).
Like Foulkes, second-generation group analysts were traumatized by fascism and World War II. They cherished the idea of co-creating safer spaces that would contribute to preventing new forms of fundamentalist thinking, as de Maré wrote: “The only answer to mass violence is collective dialogue” (de Maré, Piper, & Thompson, 1991, p. 31). De Maré’s assertion epitomizes his generation’s socially unconscious wish, materialized in group analysis through the large-group project. We can thus infer that their motivations were profoundly influenced by a desire to use large groups to encourage democratic thinking, peer leadership, and mature citizenship (Hopper, 2000).
Today, large-group work seems crucial to face contemporary challenges by fostering dialogue in communities that might function as “an antidote against social massification” (de Maré, Piper, & Thompson, 1991, p. 18). Yet, given the contemporary hardships, for some, the idea of working with group analytic large groups leads to ambivalence and disbelief at the possibility of using the large group as a tool to transform relationships among a large number of persons. Indeed, the idea of learning from experience in large groups seems to be just a little sparkle of “togetherness” amidst the uncertain fellowship witnessed in the increasing incohesion processes (Hopper, 2003a, 2019) of our century. At this point, considering the war in Europe and the transformations triggered by Covid-19, I wonder if fellowship and the dialogue envisaged by large-group work will find the strength to face the struggles posed by today’s world.
In order to do so, it seems necessary to find in an almost forgotten area of the soul, a space to develop Hopper’s (2003b) transcendent imagination and mature hope. To find this inner space, I sought inspiration in Pasolini’s “visit” to the twenty-sixth canto of Dante’s Inferno, where the poet noticed the “tiny light” from fireflies:
The poet is observing the eighth bolgia of hell, a political bolgia if ever there was one, since we can recognize a few eminent citizens of Florence gathered there “… all under the same condemnation as evil counsellors”. (Didi-Huberman, 2018, p. 1)
In an outspoken article, “The Vacuum of Power”, also known as “The article of fireflies” (“L’articolo delle Lucciole”), initially published in the Corriere della Sera in 1975, Pasolini analyses the decline of old fascism and the rise of a “permissive” neofascism in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s. To develop his critique, Pasolini used as a metaphor the sudden disappearance of fireflies from the fields of Italy due to air and water pollution (Penna, 2022).
Years later, based on Pasolini’s metaphor, the philosopher Didi-Huberman wrote Survival of the Fireflies (2018) to discuss the importance of the survival of experience as a form of political resistance in dark times. Didi-Huberman inquires:
But first, have the fireflies truly disappeared? Have they all disappeared? Do they still emit – their wondrous intermittent signals? Do they still seek each other out somewhere, speak to each other, love each other in spite of all, in spite of all the machine – in spite of the murky night, in spite of the fierce spotlights? (p. 21)
We might imagine that, because of their fragility, the fireflies would be certainly condemned to disappear. However, as Didi-Huberman (2018) highlights, the live firefly dance can take place only in the middle of the darkness, where it creates a dance of desire that forms a community, a community of survival, a community of resistance. Therefore, as Didi-Huberman states that “the ability to recognize a resistance in the smallest firefly [becomes] a light for all thought” (p. 33).
Throughout Didi-Huberman’s ideas, it is clear how the metaphor of the “surviving fireflies” describes precisely the relevance and meaning of the group-analytic endeavour from the heroic times at Northfield to the contemporary large groups. Group-analytic professionals’ attitudes and experiences, especially through large-group work, represent sparkling lights of understanding and thinking to face the darkness before contemporary personal and social suffering. I wonder if, like “tiny human-fireflies”, we could develop a bioluminescent skill to illuminate the paths of persons, crowds and masses in the darkness of the twenty-first century struggles (Penna, 2022).
“Bosque Esmeralda” in Mexico City
References
Agamben, G. (2005). State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
D’Auria, A; Negro, S. (2016). Dal Large Group al Gruppo Allargato Analitico. Gruppi, 2 (42-66).
de Maré, P., Piper, R. & Thompson, S. (1991). Koinonia: From Hate Through Dialogue to Culture in the Large Group. London: Karnac.
de Maré, P. (2012). Large group perspectives. In: R. Lenn & K. Stefano (Eds.). Small, Large, and Median Groups (pp. 79–98). London: Karnac.
Didi-Huberman, G. (2018). Survival of the Fireflies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Elias, N. (1939). The Civilizing Process. New York: Blackwell, 2000.
Elias, N. (1984). What is Sociology? New York: Columbia University Press.
Elias, N. (2001). The Society of Individuals. London: Continuum.
Foulkes, S. H. (1948). Introduction to Group-Analytic Psychotherapy. London: Karnac, 1983.
Foulkes, S. H. (1975a). Group Analytic Psychotherapy: Methods and Principles. London: Karnac, 2002.
Foulkes, S. H. (1975b). Problems of the large groups. In: L. Kreeger (Ed.). The Large Group: Dynamics and Therapy (pp. 33–56). London: Karnac.
Freud, S. (1921). Group Psychology and the Analysis of The Ego. S.E., 18:67–143. London: Hogarth.
Fukuyama, F. (2018). Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Harrison, T. (2000). Bion, Rickman, Foulkes and the Northfield Experiments: Advancing on a Different Front. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Hopper, E. (2000). From objects and subjects to citizens: group analysis and the study of maturity. Group Analysis, 33(1):29-34.
Hopper, E. (2003a). Traumatic Experience in The Unconscious Life of Groups. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Hopper, E. (2003b). The Social Unconscious: Selected Papers. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Hopper, E. (2012). Introduction. In: E. Hopper (Ed.). Trauma and Organizations (pp. xxxi-li). London: Karnac.
Hopper, E. (2019). “Notes” on the theory of the fourth basic assumption in the unconscious life of groups and group-like social systems – Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification or (ba) I: A/M.
Hopper, E. (2020). The tripartite matrix, the basic assumption of Incohesion and Scapegoating in Foulkesian Group Analysis: Clinical and empirical illustrations, including terrorism and terrorists. IAGP Forum, 8:26-40.
Hopper, E. (2022). “Notes” on Processes of Fundamentalism and Scapegoating in the Context of the Basic Assumption of Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification or (ba) I: A/M. In: A. Berman & G., Ofer (Eds.). Socio-Cultural and Clinical Perspectives of Tolerance: Hope and Pain of Meeting the Other. London: Routledge.
Hopper, E. & Weyman, A. (1975). A sociological view of large groups. In: L. Kreeger (Ed.). The Large Group: Dynamics and Therapy (pp. 159–189). London: Karnac.
Hopper, E., & Weinberg, H. (Eds.) (2017). The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups, and Societies, Vol. 3: The Foundation Matrix Extended and Re-configured. London: Karnac.
Jacobs, I. (1973). Report on the Large Group at the European Workshop on Group Analysis, No. 1. Group Analysis (G.A.I.P.A.C) 1(3): 26–28.
Kernberg, O. (2020). Malignant Narcissism and Large Group Regression. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 89:1, 1-24.
Kreeger, L. (1975). Introduction. In: L. Kreeger (Ed.). The Large Group: Dynamics and Therapy (pp. 13–29). London: Karnac.
Kreeger, L. (2009). Introduction to large groups. Group Analysis, 42(3): 282–285.
Le Bon, G. (1895). The Crowd. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1995.
Main, T. (1975). Some psychodynamics of large groups. In: L. Kreeger (Ed.). The Large Group: Dynamics and Therapy (pp. 57–86). London: Karnac.
Moscovici, S. (1985). The Age of the Crowd: A Historical Treatise on Mass Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nitzgen, D., & Hopper, E. (2017). The concepts of the social unconscious and of the matrix in the work of S. H. Foulkes. In: E. Hopper & H. Weinberg (Eds.). The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups, and Societies, Vol. 3: The Foundation Matrix Extended and Re-configured (pp. 3–25). London: Karnac.
Nye, R. (1995). Introduction. In: G. Le Bon. The Crowd (pp. 1–25). New Brunswick: Transaction.
Pasolini, P. P. (1975). The Vacuum of Power in Italy. Retrieved from http://cittapasolini.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-vacuum-of-power-il-vuoto-del-potere.html
Penna, C. (2022). From Crowds to Dynamics of Large Groups: Historical, Theoretical and Practical Considerations. London: Routledge.
Sighele, S. (1891). The Criminal Crowd and Other Writings on Mass Society. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.
Tarde, G. (1890). The Laws of Imitation. London: Read Books, 2013.
Turquet, P. (1975). Threats to identity in large groups. In: L. Kreeger (Ed.). The Large Group: Dynamics and Therapy (pp. 87–144). London: Karnac.
Van Ginneken, J. (1992). Crowds, Psychology & Politics, 1871-1899. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Von Platen, A. (1996). Thoughts on the Setting of the Large Analytic Group. Group Analysis, 29 (4): 485-489.
Wilke, G. (2003a). Chaos and order in the large group. In: S. Schneider & H. Weinberg (Eds.). The Large Group Re-visited: The Herd, Primal Horde, Crowds and Masses (pp. 86–97). London: Jessica Kingsley.
THE GROUP ANALYTIC “WAY” OF CONVENING CONSTRUCTED LARGE GROUPS
Earl Hopper
I – Preamble
Carla and I have been working together. We are each psychoanalysts and sociologists. Our work on large groups always reflects a potentially creative tension between these two frames of reference and disciplines. We share a vocabulary and intellectual sensibility.
Unfortunately, as Carla mentioned, we are starting more or less where we left off when I last saw many of you a year ago on the screen when I lectured on what I called “the return of the scapegoats” from their social psychic retreats in the “East”, which I did not regard as a simple geographical direction or location but which I conceptualised as a social psychological state of mind that was also materialised in a geographical direction or location, at least from the point of view of those of us in the “West”. I am sure that the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia from the East permeates our thinking and our working together. This is best acknowledged straight away, although I doubt whether we will have the time to address this overwhelming concern.
I am also pleased that Carla has acknowledged the importance of classical Italian work on crowds and contemporary Italian work on field theory. Recent Italian work on field theory seems to be saying exactly what group analysts have been saying since the inception of Group Analysis during the 1930s. Actually, Group Analysis is a kind of field theory about persons, groups, and various social formations which form the context of them, and Group Analysts are psychoanalytical and sociological field theorists (Penna & Hopper, 2022). During the 1960s and 1970s those of us in London who were interested in the Large Group were working closely with Italian colleagues. For various reasons, which I do not entirely understand, this Italian work has become split-off from English and American work, or perhaps vice-versa. I hope that we can resume our collaboration.
II – Introduction
I would like to begin my presentation this morning about convening large groups from a group analytical point of view, or from my own point of view as a particular kind of group analyst, by emphasising that when we discuss large groups, we are almost always referring to what I call “constructed large groups”, which are a particular kind of social formation. There are many other large social formations, but they are not large groups, at any rate not in the English sense of the word “group”.
Remember: a group is a very specific kind of social formation. It is very open to the outside and very open to the inside, or in other words, open both to its environmental context and to the personalities and actions of its participants. A group has a very minimal degree of institutionalisation. Its territory is likely to be transitory, or rented, so to say. A constructed large group depends on the larger social formations that form its context for dealing with – if not actually solving – a variety of fundamental problems of living.
The participants in a constructed large group take for granted that these activities will be managed within its contextual social formations. The purpose of a constructed large group must be understood in terms of the work that the members of it have contracted to do, sometimes explicitly. This work is necessarily interdependent and interpersonal. The constructed large group can be regarded in terms of populist formations and populist processes. A constructed large group exists within a defined time and space, although it can be continuous within a particular organisational context.
The size of a constructed large group is no longer a matter of controversy, but is still of interest. Pretty much from the beginning of our work with these formations, large groups were regarded as consisting of approximately 32-35 people. Pierre Turquet liked to point out that 32 was the number of members of two teams in a chess game, and that there are many other games throughout the world that also have about 32 players. The idea was that we cannot keep in mind more than this number of people, and that when the group consisted of fewer than this number, we focused on individual participants rather than the group as-a-whole. Pat de Maré, Lionel Kreeger and many others who worked with large groups seemed to be comfortable in working with groups of approximately this size, which was often comprised of four smaller groups of 8 or 9 people, as seen, for example, in the structure of wards in hospitals and similar organisations. However, I would say that this very much depends on the ecology of the meeting. With various kinds of seating arrangements and audio-visual equipment, it is possible to convene much larger groups. Ancient amphitheatres provided similar facilities, and in this context, it was difficult to distinguish a large group from an audience from a chorus.
It is important that no matter how many people participate in a constructed large group, it does not become a mob or a horde, on the one hand, or a more institutionalised social formation, such as an organisation, on the other. This means that as is the case for a small group, the large group does not have more than two roles, one of which might be a role set, for example, a small leadership team of some sort.
Only rarely do large groups exist as such in social nature. When they do exist, they are identical to the total social context. For example, you can think of a tribe as a large group, but the entire tribe and the entire large group co-exist. This is not the same as a constructed large group within the context of a larger social formation. Even when a large group of people within a tribe meet together, for example, to discuss some work or conduct prayers, and so on, this is often based on particular membership criteria, such as sex or age.
In the study of large groups, I have found that systems thinking is very useful, because it applies to the study of all kinds of constructed large groups regardless of why they have been constructed. In systems thinking, as in group analytical thinking generally, we are very preoccupied with the Lacanian Borromean Knot of the tripartite matrix involving the intertwining of the foundation matrix of the contextual society, the dynamic matrix of the group itself and the personal matrices of the participants. Foulkes liked to use the Möbius Strip as an icon for the idea that the inside is outside and the outside is inside with regard to each of these sub-matrices. So, we have a Lacanian Borromean Knot and we have a Foulkesian Möbius Strip as icons for the systemic processes which are central to the study of large groups.
I find that an unusual, very modern, and controversial concept in systems thinking is important, i.e. the dynamic open system in time and space. This is almost oxymoronic, that is to say, a contradiction in terms, because how can you have an open system when by definition a system tends to be closed? Pichon-Rivière was sensitive to this question. His notion of the dialectical spiral allows us to think about the constant interplay of the outside and the inside with regard to persons, dyads and the group as such.
When we think in terms of a dialectical spiral, we become preoccupied with time and space, and especially with what the Scharffs and I call the “If and When”. We might begin to imagine, both personally and collectively, what might not yet be in social reality, but what might be possible. Staying alert to this tension is one of the important obligations of the convenor of the constructed large group. This is where the tension between political process from the outside and the imagination from the inside become very important. It is the meeting place between political process and mature hope.
III – The Task of Convening: The two Principles of Regression and Progression
Now, to my basic points about convening large groups from the group analytical point of view. I think that it is very important to acknowledge that in Group Analysis we are guided by the two principles of what our Italian colleagues call regression and progression.
With regard to the principle of regression, we trace our work mainly to Wilfred Bion and to Pierre Turquet, two Kleinian psychoanalysts who applied psychoanalytical thinking to the study of group formations. We also trace our work to Kreeger, who was a Kleinian psychoanalyst but who became an Independent psychoanalyst. He was increasingly open to sociological ideas, and appreciated the concept of the dynamic open systems. I know this because he was one of my first supervisors. It was Kreeger who actually committed Turquet’s notes on the back of an envelope to his famous article in The Large Group on deep regression in terms of threats to identity, which implied the hypothesis of trauma.
In terms of this particular principle of regression we work as interpreters of resistance to insight, especially insight laden with affect. We are aware of equivalence among the sub-matrices. We are particularly aware of denial and disavowal, the two main defences against annihilation anxieties following traumatic experience, which is likely to involve encapsulation. This is ubiquitous in a large group where you can’t be seen, can’t be heard and where you feel a great need for recognition. We keep ourselves fairly reticent and fairly opaque. We expect psychotic anxieties, because these are associated with deeper regression. We also aware that our style of work may generate regression iatrogenically.
We assume that because regressive psychotic anxieties predominate, so too will ubiquitous basic assumption processes. One of our main jobs is to help people become aware of these basic assumptions, and to understand them. A fourth basic assumption is ubiquitous in the Large Group. I call this fourth basic assumption Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification. It is based on the fear of annihilation following traumatic experience. Incohesion tends to create contra-groupings and social psychic retreats. In the context of Aggregation we expect more Singletons and Isolates; and in the context of Massification we expect more Membership Individuals.
We try to be alert to the very frequent appearance of bizarre objects, parts of individual egos that are projected into people who enact these projections. This often defies immediate understanding.
We also try to be alert to something that is special and is very often overlooked as such: nested plays. People tend not to be aware of the ways in which they suddenly co-create a sub-group who seems to be a kind of interpersonal hotspot. The dynamics of this sub-group reflect almost everything that you need to know about the large group-as-a-whole.
IV- The Principle of Progression
From the point of view of the principle of progression, we might ask: why should there be any progression at all, given the overwhelming power of regressive processes? I think that this is a matter of intention and policy. de Maré argued that the purpose of large group work was to humanise the sponsoring organisation, and to humanise the society-as-a-whole. He argued that participation in large groups helped people transform frustration and hatred into Koinonia or impersonal fellowship. Many of our younger colleagues identify with this goal or policy. In any case, many group analysts model themselves on de Maré or at any rate on what he has come to represent.
Working in terms of the principle of progression, we facilitate and encourage the maturation and development of the group and of its participants. The convenor is more transparent, more engaging, more enquiring, and more concerned, for example, with the silent members of the group, and with those who they feel might be vulnerable to hostility, aggression, and deeper regression. I am myself not sure that there are such things as stages and phases of development other than in the convenor’s mind; nonetheless, we promote the realisation of what is on our minds: Koinonia, cohesion, and maturation! For example, we remind the group of the contractual primary task, why we have come together today to do some work.
We expect more “Individual Members”, and we encourage maturity in terms of the personal matrices of the participants. This means that we will help people to take the role of “citizen”. I prefer the notion of citizen to the notion of Individual Member. Of course, there are societal citizens, but there can also be organisation citizens. Citizens are sensitive to various kinds of personal and collective responsibilities. Personal maturation involves a kind of openness to the ethics and norms of the larger social system in which the group occurs.
V – Striking a Balance
In my view the group analytic way of convening large groups involves finding a balance between these two principles, that of regression and that of progression. It is always on my mind: have I gone too far to the right, have I gone too far to the left? How can you focus both on regression and at the same time promote development? It’s very difficult, but I believe that this is exactly the creative task of the group analytic convenor.
I would say that Gerhard Wilke, whose formation has drawn more from the study of anthropology than from the study of psychoanalysis, is especially alert to the demands of this balance. Several years ago, he used the notion of a “good inn-keeper”. He said that when he was working as a convenor of large groups, he thought of himself as a good inn-keeper. He would say, in effect, “Welcome to my inn. Tonight, we have very good roast beef, the Margaux is particularly good, would you like to sit next to the window?” He would have made sure that the window was slightly open, and that there was a fire in the grate. Now, how can you do all these things at the same time? It is very difficult.
Actually, Malcolm Pines, who is no longer with us, was constantly trying to negotiate for himself an identity in the professional space between Foulkes, de Maré, and Kreeger. Pines was really an Independent psychoanalyst. I identified with his way of working with large groups. It always involved trying to find a balance between these two principles of regression and progression. We agreed that without regression, there would not be much to learn, but without progression, there would not be much to take away from the experience. In fact, there might well be more to lose from the experience of regression, than to gain from the experience of progression.
I tend to be more transparent than Malcolm used to be. However, sometimes I am more strict and opaque. I am particularly sensitive to the dynamics of equivalence with respect to the foundation matrix. I am also preoccupied with the basic assumption of Incohesion and social trauma. In my early work I suggested that in some contexts you need a team, which means that you might need some kind of prime ministerial model. This involves its own strengths and weaknesses. Such leadership teams are often used informally.
VI – Personification
I want to emphasise that from a group analytic point of view, it is, perhaps ironically, very important to keep personal matrices in mind, especially in large group work. It is so easy to overlook personal matrices, because our first obligation is to look after the group-as-a-whole. However, we must keep in mind the personification of the roles that we co-create. There will be some typical roles, and certain people will constantly be enacting these roles. Very often we need to intervene with regard to individual persons as role players, partly because there will be some very powerful forms of role suction.
I find that the roles that are generated in Incohesion, stretching between Aggregation and Massification, and oscillating between these social psychological states, are particularly important. Membership Individuals in the form of “cheerleaders” are bound to come to the fore, as are Singletons and Isolates in the form of “space cadets”. In terms of other frames of reference, we might recognise “Caesars” and “Cassius-like figures”, or malignant narcissists and their followers, etc. In the context of massification, people who have tendencies towards malignant narcissism, who become leaders of fascist and fundamentalist processes, are readily recognised. So, too, are those who follow them blindly.
VII – A Post-script
If we had more time… I would also talk about the conditions under which we might arrange chairs in a spiral in order to create a so-called “spiral group” rather than in a circle or a set of concentric circles. This very much depends on the contracted purpose of the Constructed Large Group. I would also talk about some of the more informal aspects of convening large groups. It is important for convenors to take care of themselves in preparation for the work and in the aftermath of it. Despite appearances to the contrary, large group convenors do not simply swan into the room, take a seat, say very little, and then go to lunch. It is easy to forget the fact that it has taken a year or six months to negotiate the boundaries of the day, and another six months or so to recover from the experience, and during this time, the convenor is thinking, feeling, anticipating, wondering, trying to create a neutral space while at the same time honouring our knowledge that a neutral space will be highly penetrated and saturated by the social, political and cultural themes of the day.
I am sure that, as I said when we began, we cannot ignore the fact that we are working together in the context of a new and potential World War III, and that the last time we were together, we were addressing the problems of the two syndemics of Covid and social violence. The study of the Constructed Large Group teaches us that just as the end is in the beginning, so, too, is the beginning in the end.
P.S.:
- It might be useful to provide a very brief clinical vignette in order to illustrate the challenge that the convenor of a constructed large group must manage when trying to achieve a balance between the principle of regression and the principle of progression.
- Consider the following vignettes of a play within a play within a large group within an Institute for training group analytical psychotherapists (Griffiths, In Press); the large group at the GASI Conference in Berlin involving a racialised bizarre object.
- In terms of the principles of regression and of progression, it was necessary to accept the negative transference, but it was also necessary to keep the group from disintegrating. As Winnicott would have said, it was necessary to analyse resistances to insight and to the experience of deeper anxieties, but it was also necessary to manage the group
References
Most of the work on which this lecture is based is cited by Carla Penna in From Crowd Psychology to the Dynamics of Large Groups: Historical, Theoretical and Practical Considerations, London: Routledge.
See also: Penna, C. & Hopper, E. (2022). Fields, systems and silos: from electromechanics to the matrix. Special edition of The European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling. London: Routledge.
However, I have also drawn from:
Hopper, E. (2003a). The Social Unconscious: Selected Papers. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Hopper, E. (2003b). Traumatic Experience in the Unconscious Life of Groups: The Fourth Basic Assumption: Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification or (ba) I:A/M. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Hopper, E. (2002). Response to Walker Shield’s ‘The subjective experience of the self in the large group: two models of study’ International Journal of Group Psychotherapy. 52, 3, 433-436.
Hopper, E. (2015). Models for convening large groups and consulting to them: an introductory comment in preparation for large group in association with the tri-annual General Assembly of the IAGP in September 2015 in Rovinj, Croatia. Published by the International Association of Group Psychotherapy.
Kreeger, L. (1975). (Ed). The Large Group: Dynamics and Therapy. London: Constable. Reprinted in 1994 in London by Karnac Books and in Hopper, E. (2003) The Social Unconscious: Selected Papers. London: Jessica Kingsley.
Schneider, S. & Weinberg, H. (2003) (Eds). The Large Group Re-Visited: The Herd, Primal Horde, Crowds and Masses. London: Jessica Kingsley.
LARGE GROUP – INTEGRAL REPORT
Vanna Decandia, Maria Cristina Ferro, Giuseppina De Fino
Total participants 90, of which: 61 from different regions of Italy; 29 from England (8), Germany (5), Greece (3), Serbia (2), Ireland (2), Israel (2), United States (2), Brazil (1), Albania (1) , Finland (1), Netherlands (1), Switzerland (1)
Conveners: Earl Hopper, Carla Penna, Giovanni Losito, Simona Negro
Observers: Vanna Decandia, Maria Cristina Ferro, Giuseppina De Fino
First Session
Convener Negro: Welcomes the members of the group, introduces conductors and observers, invites them to express themselves freely, and hopes that the observers will be able to constitute the historical memory of the group.
Observer De Fino: we are here again, one year later, on a digital platform, in our homes, in front of our computers. We are different in language, nationality, experiences, personal histories, culture, and social realities of our countries of origin. The digital platform was a great opportunity to meet and work in the worst periods of our isolation, but how will it go today? We are more traumatized, terrified, and tired than we were then.
Man 1: I had a dream last night. My mother died a year and a half ago, on my name day. She appeared in my dream and she is alive, I don’t think she is dead. She reassures me that she is really dead.
Observer Decandia: I am struck by this immediate departure, without an initial silence, this dream, seems to act as a detonator, has to do with life and death. The name-day of Man 1 is December 26th, the day after Christmas, there is a birth and a death.
Observer Ferro: I am surprised at the breaking of this dream without having been a moment of silence at the beginning of the group. I think it has the character of urgency.
Observer De Fino: this very rapid beginning is associated with the dream of a mother, who – with her death – seems to be giving her son a gift (day of his name day) and reassures him after a year and a half (“I’m really dead! “) bothers me a lot. It makes me think of our elderly, sick parents in need of time, attention, and care, demanding with children who are only a little less old and in poor condition than them. “Old people who take care of other old people” I have often said. I think how painful the deaths in solitude, without a farewell during the Covid 19 pandemic, were painful for everyone. I think it is still the death of another, who in this dream appears to give comfort. And I find it terrible. I think of our Western world, in particular Italy, aged and unable to bear children, because the future no longer even knows how to imagine it.
Woman 1: This dream at the beginning of the group excites me a lot because there is a dead person, who appears alive. It makes me think about how we keep ourselves alive, how we cope with death, and how life can continue in another way. Another association concerns fireflies, about the work of C. Penna: fireflies must be in a group to shed light, if they are sun they shed light only for themselves. At first, I had a positive feeling, like in the dream of Man 1 in which the mother died but is still alive. Then I thought that in Italy prostitutes are indicated with the word “fireflies” and I thought of fireflies as a devastated females. This reminded me of the war in Ukraine. The emotional and social situations, which cross us at this moment, are very intense.
Woman 2: It is a challenge for me to speak Italian-English, my mother tongue is German. Fireflies as symbols of prostitutes in Italy? When Carla Penna spoke of fireflies I was thinking of only one firefly, I did not know that there could be groups of fireflies. I thought they have to be in a group to shed some light.
Woman 3: I am deeply moved by the image of Carla Penna. I too thought that in Italy, when we talk about fireflies, we also think of prostitutes, because on the deserted streets they light fires to keep warm, they light up the night. And these fires attract fireflies, attract them. In Puglia on the fast-flowing roads, you can see the bonfires of the “fireflies” in the night, the cold, and the conditions of decay and loneliness come mind. All this makes me think of the cold, the conditions of suffering, and the fires in Ukraine. The first time I saw fireflies was on a country road in Fiesole, on the occasion of a Coirag workshop, they seemed to dance.
Man 1: Fireflies have a cold light and there is no combustion, prostitutes a warm light like the light of missiles. Fire is eating together, but it is also war. Fire is at the origin of evolution.
Man 2: I was thinking about the dream, about the return of the mother and this made me think about the experience of panic and Freud. (quote from “Psychology of the masses”). There are references to maternal presence and warmth as if missiles replace maternal containment in the dark. Panic and darkness. The possibility that the group turns on lights. There is the possibility that the group will move around these lights.
Woman 3: I am from Benevento and in this area, in the popular tradition of the peasant world, it is told of the “Janare”, the witches of Benevento who gathered under an immense walnut tree and danced around the trunk. The Janare were considered free women.
Someone says (a male voice?): “Witches burn on pyres”.
Observer Ferro: the succession of these interventions in a family atmosphere reminds me of a pre-session anecdote in which the sensation of being surrounded, denied, and immediately transformed into an embrace emerges.
Observer De Fino: I am fascinated by this front of women in the Italian group: dreamers, enchanted by the dance of fireflies, participants in the suffering of other women, points of light, prostitutes, witches, and free women. It doesn’t happen often. Some seem to say, “We are not just mothers! We are women!”. Maybe it’s just my idealization, for a while I too shared the illusion of solidarity. The Janare, in the tradition of Benevento, can be malignant, lonely, evil, spiteful, or benevolent. Some legends tell of their hellish orgies on Saturday nights under the huge walnut tree. Today in the group someone would like to burn them on a stake as in the fifteenth century.
Woman 4: I’d like a summary of what was said, I don’t understand Italian. I’m missing something about fireflies and prostitutes.
Man 3: We thought there was a simultaneous translation, but there isn’t! I seem to stay in my fantasies.
An exchange takes place to understand what is incomprehensible: some members of the group report that simultaneous interpreting does not work.
They specify that you have to press the translation button and select the language in which you want to listen. Someone protests because this was not specified before the large group started.
Observer Ferro: I feel anger and the search for a culprit circulating.
Observer De Fino: I take advantage of the misunderstanding to catch my breath. I wonder how much was lost in the translation.
Woman 5: I was looking out and at a certain point I realized that the same interpreter gives a voice to several people, who can only be identified by watching the video. This gives me the idea of the group.
Observer Decandia: this intervention comes when I too realize the same thing. If you look away since the voice is one, you don’t understand where one person’s speech ends and another’s begins. I think about the mistakes I will make, all the senses must be alert so as not to confuse the borders, I reassure myself by thinking of the presence of the other two observers.
Observer Ferro: I realize that my screen is not set on an overall view but each individual. I change the setting and I begin to see the group.
Man 4: It is interesting to see that when something doesn’t work, the oral element restores the dialogue. Whose fault is it when something goes wrong?
Man 5: Thanks for the reports. It seems to me that the primary task of the large group is to facilitate the process of regression and progression. How is this different from the task of all types of therapy? How are these processes managed in the context of individual therapy? Do you understand the matter?
Woman 6: In individual therapy, there are two, in the group the boundary is important.
Man 5: You should consider the experience of therapists in different ways. I am not asking you about the challenges of the large group, but I am asking you if you see a difference between individual and group therapy in the containment of a psychotic regression.
Observer Ferro: I think these “intellectualizations” are a way of not approaching the feeling of guilt and failure
Woman 7: I wonder about therapy and the vicious circle of war.
Woman 1: I wonder what emotion warfare gives me? I feel dizzy, how could this happen? Putin was talked about like a madman, I worked in psychiatry and the madman is linked to the lack of responsibility. I tried to understand Russia’s reasons. In the GASI group, it was said that it will be difficult to find solutions. Today I’m happy to see everyone again. I read in a chat the article in “Corriere della Sera“, which spoke of Putin’s childhood and youth: he belonged to a social minority, born poor. I try to look for the reasons for a violent person, who sees America as the dominant power and then uses force to get respect.
Man 1: Borders are violated, hospitals are bombed. I have an adopted Ukrainian boy in therapy. He had the experience of the orphanage because his parents were alcoholics. In the orphanage, the borders are violated and the child looks for the border.
Observer Ferro: I think too much is being said, that boundary is needed. The climate is heavy.
Woman 8: It’s hard to be in this group. If I listen to the sound of my heart I feel it heavy. I have the sensation of the obstacle of the language. The majority are accused of speaking an incomprehensible language. We have found the enemy in the language, we have cruelly accused, we have gone on “intellectualization” and now we are talking about borders. Let’s escape to some article or some patient we have in therapy. We can’t stand conflict when everything around us is in conflict.
Man 5: I am a Holocaust survivor, born in a Nazi ghetto on the border with Ukraine. In recent days I have seen many Ukrainians crossing the border and this has awakened my memories. Aggressive forces threaten society. Symbolically, by coming together we increase our ability to understand to heal the wounds of our humanity. We are threatened by warlords and “intellectualization” helps us to tolerate helplessness.
Observer De Fino: it is important to give a name to things, to name the sense of helplessness that annihilates us inside and outside the group, and to hear the “heavy sound” of one’s heart. After all, we are all survivors of the experience of helplessness and isolation, experienced during the pandemic from Covid 19, and of the depressive anguish that ensued and that concerns the future. Will the world go back to what we knew before all this? The pandemic is not over yet. And now there is war in Europe! And somehow there has always been a war for survival within large groups.
Convener Penna: There was an initial misunderstanding about the metaphor of fireflies, interesting the different meaning of fireflies. We are in an event where we speak in Italian and English. We have experienced the unknown, the impossibility of free communication. We are making an effort to understand each other and this surprises us. The meaning of this war is very difficult to understand, this is a great challenge for us in the group and outside the group.
Observer Ferro: I feel that the two previous interventions allow the group to begin to digest what is incomprehensible.
Woman 2: It’s like we’re not connected. I had a hard time understanding and felt threatened by this separation.
Woman 9: My parents are Ukrainian and I have a feeling of pain. I traded fireflies for firefight, with burning things, bombs. I’ve seen war, fire, fire flags… I’m trying to digest what we live and see, not understand. It is not a movie. I feel like *** (Man 5).
Woman 7: From Belgrade I too thought of the same image of war and fire.
Woman 2: I can’t understand why all of this happens. I see that life is fragile and there is no security, I am very close to this conflict.
Woman 10: As for fireflies, at first I didn’t understand either. I understood fire flags. I’m thinking about my dream tonight. It is a very short image. I dreamed of a huge explosion in the night, everything was yellow and red. I was just a spectator and I saw some men who jumped in the air following the explosion. I thought they were all dead. Then I realized they were alive, because they were wearing an asbestos suit. I thought in the dream that they must have felt very hot inside the overalls and must have suffered a lot. I thought of asbestos, which protects against fire, but is also very toxic. War is regression.
Observer Ferro: the dream makes me think of the group that finds itself after a year having to face the “war” emergency, after having survived the Covid emergency.
Woman 3: I thought of ‘The War of Fire’, a French film by Annaud about the discovery of fire by primitive men. It takes place at the time of the caves. Fire, discovered by chance, was very scary at first. How difficult it was to discover its usefulness and, above all, learn how to preserve it! It reminds me of the primitiveness of war.
Woman 11: I remember when my children were small, we were walking in the countryside and I said: “What a pity, there are no more fireflies!”. They replied: “No, mom, we have seen them!”. I went from the joyful image of children, who see fireflies, to the image of the aggressive aspects of fire. However, fire is also passion, it heats food. There is a saying: be careful not to “mistake fireflies for lanterns”. Then I think of *** (Men 1)’s dream, where his mother reassures him that she is dead and not alive. I have a hard time putting all these images together. There are so many wars and so many refugees, why are these different?
Man 7: The prostitute fireflies who light the fire and bring sex, the primary source of life… from Eros to Thanatos. The group is unable to stay in life, in generativity, it has moved on to war, to aggression. The group has to deal with Thanatos first. “
Woman 10: With your story you are the firefly!
Man 7: What’s the price? What do you have to give me for this?
Woman 1: We are different fireflies; we must find a way to make love. I feel privileged because I know a few non-Italian people in this group, I speak a little English. I feel in the middle, it is my personal matrix. In my family I am a mediator. My name ‘****’ originates from a feminine that helps and that mean, it was the name of a woman, perhaps my father’s lover before he married my mother. She was a simple woman who worked and perhaps she was a prostitute.
Woman 2: All connected!
Woman 11: The name “firefly” does not have a derogatory meaning. However, generativity and love are far removed from prostitutes.
Woman 12: Fireflies are a childhood memory, they brought me a feeling of sadness, because they are in extinction. They don’t give me joy, but a feeling of sadness.
Man 4: What kind of fire do we need in this group? To bring the other party that has the microphone and video off inside the group?
Woman 2: Thank you Woman 1. Maybe many are staying! And many remain outside.
Convener Hopper: In our work we sometimes create situations in which people prefer to be observers, witnesses of what is happening. I wonder: can we recognize one firefly from the other? can fireflies have names? Is the name enough to give an identity? I don’t know if we can talk about human intimacy with regard to the personification of fireflies. Intimacy is very difficult to achieve
Woman 6: When I was little I lived in Italy. The Italian language reminds me of my childhood. I saw on television a bus full of orphans from Ukraine who were being taken to England. Do those children actually want to be adopted?
Man 5: The desire to be adopted responds to the desire not to be alone. People struggle against annihilation in the drama to which we are exposed “.
Woman 13: There is something missing. I feel invited to speak. There is a kind of failure in this war, an unmet need, uncertainty. I didn’t have any dreams last night. However, every time I woke up during the night I was convinced that I had my mother next to me and not my husband as in reality. Everyone is hungry. I feel angry with everyone. Fire heats and destroys, fireflies are beautiful. Talking about intimacy – familiarity is impossible. We are in denial.
Woman 14: I imagine a man who takes fireflies, closes them in a jar and watches those creatures suffocate.
Woman 15: This is the first time I’ve attended. I have two emotions. The first is linked to the first dream, because I too recently lost my mother. The second concerns fireflies: you only see them if there is no high pollution rate “.
Woman 16: I have a sense of uneasiness (refers to the fireflies locked in the jar). I associated fireflies with refugees: they can be placed in a jar (locked underground, hidden, isolated in cellars) and suffer a lot or be saved at the Ukrainian / Polish or Belarusian / Polish border. We are killing many Syrian and Afghan refugees, while the Ukrainians cross the same border. We would like to save everyone, but we are the architects of death.
Convener Penna: It is difficult to contain bad and good images. It is very interesting to see how people perceive fireflies differently. We are projecting into the image of fireflies how difficult it is to be together and become a community, to bear pain, to share, to dialogue. It is especially painful now that there is an unexpected war.
Woman 17: The closest experience to war for me was in Lebanon in 2018. My husband is Lebanese. He told me that they were on the terrace of a friend’s house and saw the bombs falling on the airport. They were bored, that terrace was the only space to be together with a friend, there is nothing could be done. These images overlap. Why this war and not the others? There is the specter of nuclear war that we are not talking about, but it is there. That is why this war affects us more than the others. A strong feeling of annihilation is coming in unconsciously.
Convener Negro: Here in the group whoever speaks has the sensation of still feeling alive, but there are people who do not speak and are afraid. We wonder if the one who does not speak is dead or alive, if he has survived. Another fear is that of famine. There is a concern that there is no food for everyone. Will we have enough to eat? Are we all going to starve? Are there internal elements that animate cannibalistic fantasies? Is the speaker taking the food of the others as well?
Short silent (few seconds)
Woman 18: I feel I can speak because the pace has changed, I was waiting for a break. I was trying to listen to all these falling words, a bombardment of words in which it is difficult to hear. I needed a pause to intervene, silence to hear our breathing. Covid took our breath away.
Woman 19: Thank you, *** (Woman 18), for giving the word to one of my experiences. It is difficult to find space and silence to intervene. I was thinking of *** (Men 1)’s dream, it is powerful, shocking. Death gives comfort. How can you stay in a bunker? Can the idea of death be a comfort? My grandfather fought in World War II. He often recounted his memories of the war, it was a sort of ritual, all the stories ended with an episode: … prisoner in Rome, he was about to be shot. At one point one of the soldiers of the firing squad shouted: “Italians go home!”. They escaped, made the journey from Rome to Puglia on foot and used a bicycle without tires, repaired as best as possible with ropes. Without that cry “Italians go home!”, I would not have existed. I think last year we were here in full pandemic. We at least survived the pandemic, but today there is war. There will be someone who will shout: “Italians, go home!”. Will we be here again next time? Will we find a bike without tires or will death be a comfort?
Observer Decandia: I feel in tune with these interventions that underline the change in rhythm, I perceived it incessant, without spaces, defensive.
Man 8: It is impossible to tolerate silence, difficult to tolerate death. There is an oscillation between Eros and Thanatos. When you are afraid, terror and hilarity, death and sexual drive are mixed. Intimacy and connection with each other, do you see the difference? In Italy, the only invasion was that of refugees. How to see the enemy or friend in the refugee? Even the neighbor can become the enemy. What is the hospitable place to live? Nuclear power could destroy all of humanity and, on the contrary, fireflies could survive. The large group is the place where conflicts should be symbolic, not acted out with weapons.
Man 7: We are talking about dead mothers, living mothers, remembered mothers and where is the father? Is the group only remembering the mother or does the group need the father’s name to progress? The father is not just a warrior who kills. The father brings the word.
Observer De Fino: what is behind the Father’s loud request?
Man 1: The father regulates the distance, the mother approaches. It is like the porcupine rule: from a distance the animal moves tenderness, if you look at it closely it scares you, because you can see the quills.
Woman 20: It is difficult to summon the father where mediation attempts fail, logos fail. I am shaken by this war. Before they were far away and there was solidarity, but with this war I felt a great fear, but not for me. I am afraid for my son and my granddaughters. I am very worried about humanity, but I must recognize that at the top of this humanity there are the people closest to me. It is a more documented war and it has mobilized emotions. Putin says “You will see things you have never seen before!”. We get terrifying solicitations. I just can’t see the father; we should find him in political capacity and now it’s still chaos.
Observer Decandia: I recognize in this speech the fear of mothers, which I have often heard expressed in this period, which war can take their children away
Observer Ferro: I identify a lot with feeling anguish and fear for children.
Woman 1: It is very easy to identify destructiveness, violence, war, aggression with the male. I think of Putin and his traumatic childhood. Destructivity is not just the prerogative of the masculine. I reply to *** (Woman 16)’s intervention: why do Ukrainian refugees affect us more? I think this has to do with guilt. It is important to work within ourselves, to reflect on the possibility of being destructive. It is important to take responsibility and blame.
Woman 2: Is this war caused by an aggressive human being? Can a single man be that powerful and aggressive? Are there no other people?
Convener Hopper: Both. Co-constructed roles and personification. What would this large group be like if there was no war in Ukraine? How are we using it? It is very important to talk about it. Is there a lack of dependence on an adequate father? War is terrible, it is difficult to identify unconscious processes.
Observer Ferro: I perceive this intervention as a response to the group’s request for the father’s word: wondering how the group is using the war event would seem to give a boundary.
Woman 21: I’m perplexed. I am from the Netherlands. I guess I have a son and grandchildren. I reflect on the images on television chosen to document the war. There are those who can escape and those who must remain. I saw a child who receives a toy, a unicorn, he doesn’t seem to understand what is happening around him, but even the grandmother who is with him doesn’t seem to realize. I identify with the child, but also with others, with men.
Man 1: In war there is the eclipse of the father figure. They try to save the children. It seems to me that there is no patricide. It seems to me that brothers want to kill brothers.
Man 9: Eros and Thanatos are always present. Without the dark, the fireflies are not seen, but they exist. I think about the future. The war must end immediately! The war made me discover a kind of sympathy towards a population not in tune with that I am. There was no need for a war to discover a sympathy.
Man 2: The mode of violation is unheard of and it is unlikely that there is not something very primitive, of genocide. It is a dramatic aspect and it anguishes us and has nothing human at all, it is like an enslavement to the id. The theme of fireflies is an aesthetic sign, even of romantic beauty. We are astonished at this event and we are all annihilated.
Man 1: I was thinking about vampirism: an old person feeds on the blood of a young woman. Association with Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde. Dr. Jekyll is a physician.
Woman 6: Inadequate father … what’s happening? will we fight against the father? can we integrate fathers too?
Woman 8: Maybe we are using war as “One” instead of seeing our differences. It’s convenient not to feel potential conflicts.
Man 4: For a long time I felt divided. I can’t find the words to say what I feel.
Convener Hopper: I don’t feel psychoanalytic thought, but I hear a lot of thought. We are not talking about the father, but about the brothers. The conflict between brothers occurs when the father has no authority as a leader.
Convener Penna: Refugees have only a national identity, they don’t have an identity as a person, they don’t have a name. It is very painful not to have an identity. They become insects; we do not perceive the lights when they are together.
Man 10: There are broad categories of interpretation in the media. The reasons for the war are diverse and supra-personal. They are historical, geopolitical, economic, conflicting interests between one dictator and another. We also think about real elements if we want to make sense of things. The small group brings out the unconscious, the large group helps to think, we must take this into account.
Convener Penna: Let’s conclude in the next session.
Observer Decandia: the group started from the theme of life and death, it seemed to me in search of a deciphering of what is incomprehensible. I perceive this speech of the fireflies in the various meanings that have been attributed as a kind of nostalgia for a lost time. Even the theme of fireflies / prostitutes has something romantic, a bit as described in the song “Via del Campo” by Fabrizio De André
Observer Ferro: I am reminded of a children’s story by Eric Carle called “The little Tuttasola firefly”. The firefly begins its journey in the dark in an attempt to search for other fireflies, but comes across many illusory lights. They are not other fireflies but only light bulbs, car headlights, torches, the eyes of a dog and a cat arguing and fireworks. Only when silence returns and the firefly begins to fly again does he see what he was looking for, that is, so many fireflies that make their lights shine. She is no longer alone.
Second Session
Convener Hopper: I’m worried about starting. How many of us actually know each other? I have a friendship with some for decades!
Man 3: I feel frustrated after the first session, isolated, helpless, my pains have flared up. Nobody thought war was the problem. Moravia said that war must become as taboo as incest. I was hoping to find a moment of sharing, no one has touched the point that interests me, but it consoles me to be with friends I have known for a long time (he means those who are in the group).
Observer Decandia: I perceive this suffering with intensity, a pain without a name
Observer Ferro: I feel the suffering inherent in this intervention, but also the aggression and the blame for not wanting to see.
Woman 1: What’s the key point for you? You can help us?
Woman 7: Before recognizing you, I felt the same thing too!
Man 1: During the break I reflected on original sin … 15 years ago we organized a meeting on pleasure and religion. We searched in Puglia for all the religions present in the area. I went to Orsara di Puglia to take a Waldensian shepherdess and during the trip I asked her about original sin. She linked it to a lack of knowledge rather than sexuality. If I’m wearing a uniform, it’s easier to kill.
Observer De Fino: incomprehensible interventions, just for me perhaps, increase the level of aggression in the group.
Man 3: What a terrible time when idiots rule blind. Shakespeare said so (quotes “King Lear” by William Shakespeare).
Woman 22: I find great resistance in this group, there are strong “intellectualizations”, it is difficult to touch emotions. There are many seniors in this group with war-related traumatic matrices and strong defences, this war is a new trauma for them. I had a parallel meeting with the young people (group to which I belong), there were Russian colleagues. The Ukrainians were not there, but they were present with their absence, with their empty chairs. There were moments of sharing that are not here and it is very sad. The Russians talked about their suffering during the Cold War, about the large amount of money spent on weapons. I think of my children, who are now small … if they were forced to take up arms … There is a lot of theoretical thinking here, there are so many puns, but where are our feelings? Are they too painful? Am I not too old for you?
Observer Decandia: this intervention seems to me to introduce a change in the group, I perceive it as aggressive, but at the same time necessary.
Observer Ferro: I feel that the new generation does not feel understood in their anguish and feels alone.
Woman 9: I belong to the older generation. It is difficult to imagine what this group would be like if there was no war. However, the war is there. I cannot think of anything else. What we are talking about is a collective, intergenerational trauma. We represent our parents. We feel helpless. In Israel we try to absorb and understand. I can’t talk about anything else at the moment. I have horrible dreams.
Man 4: I am German and have lived in England for many years. My father went to Ukraine, they greeted them as friends, Eastern Ukrainians were the enemies. We can talk about good and bad, positive experiences and negative experiences. I think there is shame in this group. It is easier for us to talk about Russians and Ukrainians, because this group is made up of different nationalities. I feel a kind of embarrassment in making judgments, being German.
Woman 7: (links to what Donna 22 said about other groups and older generation) I participated in a group of 220 people. The “idiots” mentioned by Roberto can change constantly. Twenty years ago these groups did not exist, they would have made a difference.
Man 3: The idiots are not only the Putins, but also the US and NATO!
Woman 7: The problem with war is that you have to choose your side.
Woman 23: In the course of small groups of students the Russians said that you have to be neutral! What does neutral mean?
Woman 7: We must be thinking citizens!
Woman 22: Can we be neutral, impartial?
Woman 5: I went in hungry with the hope of finding food and then became more and more exhausted. I’m afraid to say an “idiotic” thing here.
Woman 9: The idiots are the ones who know everything.
Man 5: What an irony to be in this group! There is no sense of separation and psychotic anxiety, because we are in our homes, some are with family members. Even if we try to identify with the refugees we are in comfort, we have safe lives ”.
Woman 5: But we don’t have the comfort of other people’s bodies. What would it be like to be in front of each other? I may be with my thoughts in the large group, but I feel alone here.
Observer De Fino: I wonder how much the online mode affects the performance of the group. We could not close the front door behind us, face the journey, put a distance between everyday problems and ourselves, go into the unknown, eat something with old and new people in the intervals between sessions. We are in our cages in front of a screen, which shows us many small rectangles in which faces or darkness emerge.
Woman 10: I feel anguish, my feeling is that we cannot be safe in our homes as well as Ukrainian citizens. The feeling is that it can happen to all of us! Earl mentioned World War III. The changes can be sudden: from a safe and familiar situation to the risk of death, annihilation. All this can vanish at any moment.
Woman 3: This morning, listening to the news on the news, I asked my husband: “If we were forced to leave home suddenly, what should we take with us?”. The war has entered our house, it affects us closely. There is a risk that the West will be shattered. I was born in 1955 and World War II was over 10 years ago, World War I 30. Even today, during the construction works, unexploded war relics emerge during the Second World War. Every time I go on vacation, in every village, there is a square with a monument to the fallen of World War I, there is a stele with their names, the average age of the fallen is 25 years. I lost an uncle in the war; we have all been touched. Perhaps we have deluded ourselves for too many years, hoping that the world would go in another direction. From the first session the themes of the dead / alive mother, the refugees, the refugee children that hurt us so much … that they will be adopted came out. I have a two-year-old granddaughter and I read the red thread of adoption, as if we all wanted to be adopted by the world, all our certainties fail and others see our loss.
Observer Decandia: It occurs to me that in my hometown to remember the dead of the First World War there is the park of remembrances, consisting of oaks planted for every soldier in the city killed; not far away is a more recent stele with the names of people who died to save the city from a fire, warnings for the future.
Woman 1: It’s the war between brothers that we don’t want to see. It is like the effort and the desire to learn English. Learning a new language makes me feel like when I was little, it makes me feel small while I am wrong in speaking, the mind gets tired, but the desire to be accepted, the desire to love each other is stronger.
Man 7: Up until a month ago we were at war with the virus and we were all allies. Then we discover the war between us. How much more comfortable is the external enemy! It allows us to ignore the war within us, the enemy within. With the external enemy we make things right!
Man 5: I would like to remind you that we are all going to die. We try to deny the fact that we will die. We are in a refusal of annihilation. We never think about this. We think of children and life, but none of death. How many of you have made a will? The group is working to try to deny death.
Observer Ferro: I think the large group will also end.
Woman 24: I read a book “Said liked the sea” in which there are five short stories. The first is the story of a boy, who got on a rubber dinghy to escape his country, and never arrived. In my fantasy it was as if Said was not dead, I was expecting a happy ending”.
Man 9: I am aware that I have to die, but why do I have to die badly? In Italy there are earthquake zones and nothing is done to prevent disasters, floods and nothing is done until the disaster happens. This war has very complex roots and was prepared from afar. There is a whole movement that is not just Putin. We cannot escape. There will be historians and everyone will take their responsibility. What will happen in 20-30 years that we don’t see? This is anguish. I can’t see and feel a powerful anger. I believe you shouldn’t lose your reason, emotionality is fine, but at the same time think about complexity, not neglect, read the events. I feel the anguish of not seeing in order to prevent.
Convener Hopper: I understand what you are saying. I would like to say that I am a guest here and I identify with being a guest. We take lessons but do not identify with intellectuals. Reason and feeling are both needed. The time has come to step out of passivity as a guest. There are various forms of conflict here: generational, intense sibling rivalry. We are talking about war, but we are using it as a metaphor for the processes that take place here and that would exist even if we were in times of peace. War has almost never been absent during large groups. We are using all of this. When the younger generation speaks it says <this group>, but this group is part of and is similar to other large groups. You need to attack to say “Hello”, as the baby attacks the mother’s breast.
Woman 23: When I joined the group, I saw the generational difference, the conflict between brothers and sisters. I feel like I don’t want to belong to a group where people want to be too high up. We live in the Balkans and war is very close. Young people fight. Here there is a tendency to “intellectualize”, the Italians speak only of theories. This is why I prefer to speak in English. Italians make very long speeches, which we call polarization.
Observer Ferro: the generational conflict becomes visible. I feel a lot of tension.
Convener Hopper: Polarizations between countries, between generations. She arrived late. Whenever we speak of regression we speak of the mother’s body. You can attack, but you don’t attack the object you belong to.
Woman 23: I felt attacked as a generation. I want to live. I don’t want to talk about death!
Woman 22: I spoke to a colleague; she told me that young people and children cannot bear to see anxious and depressed adults. The threat of World War III is real. I have children, a lot of money will go away with this war. I think my kids might get involved, enlist. The war is there. It is a reality; it is not a defense.
Convener Hopper: Reality is a defense. Everyone here is united against the devil, but it is also true that wars happen in the large group. Can we feel something new? What can people over 70 do?
Woman 25: I am trying to get pregnant with my husband and in this group, for the first time, I was scared. I wonder if I am ready to take on this responsibility and I wonder if I am still a daughter.
Woman 11: I had contact with death as a child. I have been an orphan since the age of 5 and this pushed me to live life, as a child you want to live life. We have deluded ourselves that we can defend ourselves from everything. During the war, children were born. If I think about my death, I’m sorry, but children and grandchildren are a guarantee of eternity. My work is too, because I know that people who have known me will carry me inside. I live every moment intensely.
Observer Decandia: for a while the dream that a little patient told me yesterday began to resonate in my mind: “a child was born, from an explosion of the mother’s belly, which in any case remained alive, but the mother was inside the belly of a monster ”, one is born anyway, how many times must one be born?
Woman 18: I need to name anger again. Do I feel what Putin can feel? What a mother feels about her baby when she says “damn me and when I brought you into the world”. Just as the son says to his dead mother “maybe I’m better off without you”. Enough with some interventions! I don’t feel alone, I trust in the large group. Try not to let anger become destructive.
Man 1: Is an angry person stronger or a happy one?
Woman 13: When I’m angry, I feel more powerful, less vulnerable. Yup! It is a defense!
Woman 6: I have pictures of earthquakes, of people who live near a volcano and don’t know when it will erupt!
Woman 5: It’s nature, it’s lava. There is a person called Vulcan here in the group.
Convener Penna: I feel so much pain and I wondered about the generational conflict. I feel in the middle but I put myself in the older generation. In our mind we are always young, while the body ages. I felt the suffering was not intellectualized. We all share the pain of both the elderly and the young. It is often said <Silence! Go away!> To both the elderly and children. We are struggling to find a space here.
Observer Ferro: I feel this intervention as the opening of a bridge in the generational conflict.
Woman 13: Anger is a defense. We are struggling to be heard here.
Woman 2: Keep trying to have a baby (to Laura). Why do you feel we are failing? True, the story is very painful. We thought war was a thing of the past, people were getting closer, and conflicts were less bitter.
Woman 13: I was late and they all seemed very angry. Yes, you have your own lives to live, you have children, grandchildren, and we live through you. We are in competition between generations, but you with us!
Observer Ferro: I feel a lot of closeness and acceptance without needing to deny conflicting aspects.
Convener Hopper: I wonder if part of this anger is a way to defend against depression or if we can cultivate a mature hope: having a child and creating something new. Anger is a defense against illusory hope and depression.
Man 1: Erikson said that generativity is passing on knowledge, meaning, history to children. Children are needed for the storytelling.
Woman 1: Debate between generations, between old and new things. The large group is a new way of meeting between different nationalities and an opening towards the unknown.
Observer Ferro: I am convinced that the session is over and I am surprised that none of the conductors conclude it. In retrospect, I believe that the creation of a bridge in the generational conflict and having felt the welcome of the old generation in giving hope to the new without having to deny conflicting aspects, led me to put a point in the Lacanian sense of the term.
Man 11: It’s nice to see the number of people hooked up to have something this morning: the wealth of contributions from Carla and Earl, valuable to hard-working analysts, and gasoline injections, lasting impact on our thoughts and feelings. I recognize the sense of disappointment expressed with respect to other groups in progress at the moment, there are various groups, there will be another one tomorrow too. All of this will allow us to face the devastation of this war in our homes. Do we also have any resources to deal with disappointment?
Observer Ferro: I still believe that the session is over and I feel a sense of annoyance. I wonder if, as a representative of the new generation, the irritation is dictated by intellectualization or even by the envy of an old generation that works hard, while the new one has difficulties and finds itself in a historical moment of great precariousness.
Convener Negro: This reminds me of the image of the myth of Demeter and Persephone. Mother Earth destroyed and devastated by bombing. In the myth Demeter loses her daughter and the earth becomes sterile. Hermes is the god who carries the word and acts as a mediator. The myth explains the alternation of the seasons, life and death and if it is possible to recover this, it is possible to recover hope.
Woman 4: Disappointment has to do with omnipotence fantasies. I was happy to have arrived after the two world wars, in a time of peace, and now the war is very close to us. The parents’ generation was involved in the war. I am angry, disappointed, sad.
Woman 9: We have two mothers and a father who keep us in this group. Two good mothers and a father. This is why I do not experience conflict; I do not feel the denial of death. How can we choose to live better? When an aggressive force enters the group I feel angry, helpless.
Chair D’Auria: We have two fathers.
The group is rumored … The absent father … Who is it? Is it Alfonso? No! Where is Giovanni?
Convener Losito: I’m here! Here I am!
Woman 26: only silent, not absent!
Convener Penna: holds the painful part of the group and feelings that we cannot express.
Woman 23: Silent father. Even in my culture, fathers are silent and not very involved in the family. Not a good thing for me!
Convener Hopper: “the group killed him; someone has to die. Decidedly! Without a doubt! “
Woman 6: Maybe killed! The silence makes me think that what it is holding back is very powerful. You didn’t say anything!
Someone says: … or helpless! …
Convener Hopper: It could be both! The inevitability!
Convener Losito (speaks in English): In my countertransference I felt old, from another era, obsolete. When I was young there was the war in Vietnam. We took to the streets to express our dissent. I was arrested for this. I was an active part in the end of the Vietnam War. If we are more active we can stop all these wars. . Young people don’t know my past. I see a passive generation; I think they are more conservative.
Observer Decandia: it seems to me that after an attack, a conflict, after going through the depression, the group notices a father, who had actually always been here. Basically we do not know if the fireflies are not there or not seen. A few years ago in Rome there was a blackout, and fireflies appeared on my terrace, which I never thought they could live in the city.
Observer Ferro: I hear the speech in Italian and English at the same time. I think this interference is making me lose my train of thought.
Woman 7: I agree on what has been said, on this passive attitude. We are all professionals, here we learn. I’m angry because we don’t do more.
Convener Hopper: I think the use of the large group is a very important tool for citizens. The division is between Giovanni and me at the level of projection. I am on the principle of progression and John is on the principle of regression. There is a polarization, so we are experimenting.
Convener Losito: The blind man does the analysis of the group.
Woman 23: I am an active citizen and I fight for human rights. If you make this declaration, you must take responsibility for not having communicated being active. It seems this group is a generational attack.
Woman 2: You’re frustrated.
Woman 23: Yes, I am!
Woman 7: We all have a sense of failure. It is the aspect of failure that we see when we compare ourselves with others.
Woman 2: Fear of failure can paralyze.
Woman 10: I think there is shame in this group.
Woman 7: Accepting failure means being humble and open to others.
Convener Penna: We always fail even when we think we are doing wonderful things.
Woman 5: I have a feeling that she is dominating English in this session. Why do you speak English? It makes me think of domination, of the Empire!
Man 9: Battles of tongues. A cluster bombing.
Woman 1: Thanks to Gianni, who – speaking in English – threw a bridge. We can contaminate ourselves and overcome rivalries. It is important to accept the new.
Man 9: It is said “do not tease the sleeping dog”, otherwise with a bite it will make you understand well!
Woman 11: I heard in both languages. I believe that speaking English is a form of welcome. Thanks, Gianni!
Woman 1: Thanks to Earl Hopper and Carla Penna, because they represent the new for us at the Circle. Thanks to all international friends.
Man 9: We have time for thanks. It’s not like we’re going to die now!
Woman 11: I recognize a responsibility for having passed on passivity to the new generations. There has been urban warfare between the generations. We have failed to build peace. We were unable to pass the “don’t make war, make love” (one of the slogans of the 1970s). The sense of failure and depression of our generation is that of having passed on passivity to the new generations.
Woman 1: Last year Hopper talked about the relationship between the inevitability of annihilation and the inevitable power of the imagination. Even if there is failure, we continually recreate. Let’s imagine another large group for next year.
Convener Penna: “We are certainly not close to the end. We still have a few minutes before the end of the session “
Some participants envy Carla Penna, because she wears summer clothes. It is summer with her in Brazil.
Observer Ferro: I think that envy is mentioned for the first time.
Convener Hopper: I would like the sun too. I saw someone with a lot of sun, maybe Donna 23 with her baby… we are close to Easter which is linked to peace, but at the same time represents the trauma plus the conflict. Jerusalem which is a place of conflict, of battles is the perfect symbol of the large group.
Woman 7. It was a good thing!
Observer Decandia: we talk about bridges, the sun is hoped for, as in the myth the seasons alternate.
Chair D’Auria: We need to close this session.
Observer De Fino: Everyone has taken on their responsibilities. Is it little? Is it a lot? Most of the group members or, perhaps, a small part will continue to think about what has happened here and now. We will certainly continue to think about the large group for a long time. And we will study hard too!
SUMMARY OF THE LARGE GROUP
Vanna Decandia, Maria Cristina Ferro, Giuseppina De Fino
Introduction
We would like to make a brief reflection on the role of silent observers in large group. First of all, we can describe how we worked together for saving up the life of the group. Each of us transcribed words and emotion during the sessions, while we were suspended in a free zone inside and outside the group, being careful about the speeches that followed one another and the dynamics in progress, listening to each emotional state, taking comfort from the fact that we were not alone.
Writing the report, we realized that we missed some passages and furthermore some interventions were incomprehensible. Comparing our three transcripts we reconstructed the event in the hope of being not too far from what really happened. Following this hard work, a next step was reviewing the report in the light of theory for trying to decode proceedings and possibly can analyse the style of work of convenors. Anyway, months later the event, we are still closely involved in large group’s dynamics and conflicts.
I – Summary of the main topics discussed in the 1st session
Silent observations
Simona Negro welcomed the members of the large group, introduced the co-Convenors and the observers, and she invited the participants to express themselves by talking freely. In addition, she hoped the observers could save everyone’s words, ideas and emotions.
Immediately, without the usual initial silence or a brief time to reflect, a participant started with the story of a dream he had about his mother who has been dead for a year and half.
It was a punch in the stomach. The image of an omnipotent mother, who reassured him but – at the same time – seemed to be a threatening presence, suddenly appeared to be an intrusion, a danger signal for the work of the group.
Thinking about the dream and bereaved, another participant said “The dream makes me think … how we face death … how we keep ourselves alive … how life goes on in another way…”.
Anyway, after that “cold shower”, some people reviewed the warm, or even incandescent, images brought by Carla Penna in her lecture:
- The images of the flames in the XXVI canto of Dante’s Inferno. The Poet – looking down the eighth bedlam – sees a lot of flames in the bottom of the cliff (the damned souls of the fraudulent advisers), like a peasant who, resting on the hill at dusk on summer nights “when flies give way to mosquitoes”, sees a lot of fireflies down the valley;
- The metaphor of fireflies, used by Pier Paolo Pasolini in an article published in 1975, to talk about the new fascism of the Consumer Society and the growing process of homologation in language, behaviours, lifestyles, bodies and desires.
The two “firefly/flame” symbolic images overlapped and set the imagination of the group on fire.
The powerful metaphor of fireflies and the infernal flames sparked a lot of free feverish speeches that followed one another without any interruption.
See below a brief summary on the main topics coming out in the first session of the large group:
- Desire to be together and hope to turn on the lights through the work of the group
- Introduction of one meaning of “firefly” in Italian culture (prostitutes are called “fireflies” in Italy)
- Nostalgia for childhood and ancient lost time
- Fires lit to warm up in the darkness of nights of loneliness, abuse, cold, war
- Free association between fireflies – prostitutes; witches – free women; erotic witches dancing around a walnut tree on Saturday nights – fired witches
- Bomb flames bringing death and destruction
- Anxieties about the traumatic effects of Covid 19 pandemic, the fear of a third world war and a nuclear catastrophe (subjects related to the time we are living and present in both lectures of Carla Penna and Earl Hopper, inevitably)
- War images bringing back traumatic memories from the past
- Death dreams, explosions and toxic defences dreams
- Desolation due to air and water pollution and climate change
“Anyway, the fireflies have not disappeared, they are still there, but we do not see them because of the dark”, someone said.
The sexualisation of fireflies was an interesting matter to think about: it could be a manic defence against depressive anxieties or a paranoid idea that someone was using the group to gain a personal advantage. In addition, the misunderstanding of the meaning of “firefly/prostitute” created a kind of barrier/obstacle. Moreover, it raised a cultural and linguistic wall or made it apparent to everyone, between the Italian group and the participants of other Nationalities, who spoke English.
Some people complained that simultaneous translation was not working, so they didn’t understand what Italian people were talking about. Some felt angry and alone, others remained silent behind videos and microphones off.
“What kind of fire do we need? Some people have turned off video and microphone. How can we take them within the group? a man asked.
“Sometimes our style of work creates a context where some people prefer to observe and witness what happens. I wonder if the personification of fireflies could evoke an intimacy that is impossible to achieve”, Earl Hopper answered.
Voices emerged, especially from the younger participants, expressing anguish, inability to think and to find a space for speaking because of the long-drawn-out river of words, which “fall like rain, like cluster bombs and take your breath away”.
“I imagine a man who is closing some fireflies in a jar with a fitted lid and watching those creatures suffocate” another young participant said.
This latter violent image sounded as a strong fear of annihilation.
The group consisted mainly of people over the age of 50, who have known each other for years, most of them were Italian. Up to now, almost all who talked were over the age of 50-60. So metaphorically, the older generation seemed to have taken and consumed everything: space, time, words, skills, resources, oxygen and hope.
The rhythm of words was incessant, defensive, without any break. Feelings of fusion and confusion, helplessness and depressive anxieties spread throughout the group like Covid 19 spread through the world. The war in Europe was a recurring theme during all of large group. It seemed impossible to talk about something else or new.
Someone invoked the presence of a Father, an authoritative leader: “We talked about living, dead or remembered mothers, but where is the father?”
“I wonder if there wasn’t war in Ukraine how this group would be. It’s much important to talk about it. How are we using all this? Is there a failed dependency on an adequate father? The war is horrible. It’s hard to identify unconscious processes”, Earl Hopper said.
The group quite ignored the question that Earl Hopper posed “If there wasn’t war in Ukraine how this group would be. How are we using all this?” and kept talking about war. Anyway, a few people talked about “brothers who want kill brothers”, “differences and possible conflicts that we don’t want to see among us”, “inadequate father”.
Earl Hopper explained: “The conflicts between brothers happen when the father hasn’t had authority as leader.”
The first session was over.
The misunderstanding of the word “fireflies”, which someone in the group understood as “fire fight” and someone else as “fire- flags”, could represent the overlapping of conflicting feelings and images in the ancient struggle between Eros and Thanatos. Lastly, one of the observers mistook “fire fighter” for “fire fight” in the hope of a truce.
II – Proceedings 1st session
Following event observations
Immediately after both Carla Penna and Earl Hopper’s lectures the group have got to face death and ambivalence feelings towards mother.
Some Italian women co-create quickly a sub-group, in which they try to defend themselves from fear of annihilation and death anguish. The sexualisation of fireflies lets them talk about deep themes as sexuality, eroticism, archaic images as witches’ orgy. Furthermore, the ‘personification’ of fireflies reminds painful images of women, victims of abuse and war. The sub-group use sexuality as manic defence against depressive anxieties and enact the illusion of fusion and solidarity, even though someone hopes they get the punishment they deserve. “The witches were burned at the stake” a person says, but the worst punishment is that a few people could understand what is being said, because simultaneous translation didn’t work.
The lack of some information about the way in which translation works increases confusion and perhaps makes easier regression.
Some have a few criticisms to make about the organization team and start searching a scapegoat.
Some attempt to open a discussion of theory subject, maybe as a defence against psychotic regression.
Sub-grouping characterises the first phases of the shift from Aggregation to Massification, the two bi-polar form of Incohesion (Hopper, E. 2003a-2003b).
Gradually, the group seem to move from searching a scapegoat to awareness of uncertainty and vulnerability of life, limits and helplessness.
At the same time, we have noticed some role players “singleton”, “lone wolves”, “cheerleaders”, who played their roles in Aggregation and Massification during all the Large Group.
The misunderstanding of the fireflies’ metaphor and the great effort to understand each other during an event in Italian and in English were underlined by Carla Penna: “We are surprised. We are experiencing unknown, the impossibility of free communication.”
We think that a dream a participant shared with the group tells something about what we are living outside and inside the group: “an enormous explosion in the night, everything was yellow and red. Some men blew up because of the explosion. Incredibly, they survived. The overalls of asbestos that men were wearing saved their lives, even though they felt much heat and pain inside their clothes and asbestos was toxic”. The dream seems to describe the current incessant exposure to images of dead and devastation by mass media. The impressive view of the explosion, the bright colours yellow and red could represent the seductive power of horror and violence. The adoption of toxic defences (asbestos) reminds to regression into mother’s body as extreme defence of a life that doesn’t want to live anymore.
Maybe defences in the group could become toxic. If they had kept us alive, we would have become ill because of their toxicity.
The members of the group are sharing recent traumatic events: Covid 19 pandemic, war in Europe and the threat of a nuclear war, even if each of them has a personal history, culture, native language, etc. All in all, these experiences might have amplified the feelings of profound helplessness, fear of annihilation and deep regression in terms of threats to identity within the Large Group.
“It’s hard to breathe” a young woman says.
“A man closes fireflies in a jar and he watches them suffocate” a participant says.
It’s so airless in the group. Fear of suffocating is associated with fusion and confusion.
Someone asks loudly for a Father.
What’s happen? Is there any danger of too much fusion? The imago of a suffocating mother is circulating in the group since from the beginning. Maybe people in panic are searching for a “master”, a dictatorial Father. Maybe King-Father Earl has been dispossessed of his power and authority. Maybe he hasn’t. Maybe King-Father Giovanni is hiding from the group and we should know what he’s thinking about.
As silent observers we feel like we are “defenceless orphans”, who go where the others take them, not where they want. We feel beaten by heavy rain of words.
III – Summary of the main topics discussed in the 2nd session
Silent observations
The mood within the group seemed to be tense and worried.
Earl Hopper highlighted a matter of concern: “I’m worried about starting the 2nd session. How many people are here who know one another, actually? There are quite a few participants who have known each other from previous events. Many old friends of mine are here! I’ve known them for decades!” He seemed to be suggesting that climate of fusion and confusion established in the first session didn’t facilitate the development of the group.
A suffering man was the first to speak. He talked about his disappointment and an unthinkable pain, all over his body: “I felt frustrated by the first session, I felt alone, helpless. My pains are getting worse. This morning I came in the hope of a short time for sharing, but nobody talked about the point I’m interested in. Anyway, lasting friendships give me a great comfort today.” In addition, he quoted William Shakespeare: “Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind”.
Communication was becoming increasingly aggressive. A young woman blamed older members of the group for “strong defences” and “intellectualisation”. “The elderly in our group has a traumatic matrix connected with their war experiences in the past. The war in Europe is a new trauma for them. There are such a lot theory and words games, here. Where our feelings are? Are they too much painful? Am I too much young for you?” she said.
The members of the group keep talking about war. “I’m not able to speak about anything other than war, now. I’ve been having a lot of horrific dreams, lately”, a woman said.
“War has come in our home. We would like to be adopted by the world, we feel unsafe in our homes and everyone can see our confusion, we have lost the way”, another woman said.
Earl Hopper pointed out several conflicts within the group: conflicts between generations and intense rivalries between siblings. He said: “The war is a defence. We are using war as a metaphor for what is happening here. It could be the same, even if there wasn’t any war. We join against the evil here, but war has been happening in the large group all the time.”
“War is real, it isn’t a defence!” a woman affirmed.
The conflict between old and young generation came out openly: younger generation got really frustrated, anguished and misunderstood by elderly at all. A young woman said: “I want to live. I don’t want to talk about death”. Another young woman confided she was trying to have a baby with her husband, but the group scared the life out of her; she added: “I wonder if I’m ready, if I’m still a daughter.”
Carla Penna said: “I feel so much pain here. We always feel as though we were young in our minds, even if our body ages. We all share the pain, both the elderly and young people. Both elderly and children are often told: ‘shut up! go away!’… We are fighting for finding a space here.” She tried to build a bridge between generations sharing pain.
“Anger is a defence. We are fighting for being listened here!” a woman said.
“We have always been in competition between generations, but we are with you.” another woman said.
“I wonder if part of this anger is a defence against illusory hopes and depression or it’s possible to nurture a mature hope and have a baby.” Earl Hopper replied.
Simona Negro talked about the myth of Demeter and his daughter Persephone: “The Greek myth explains the changing of the seasons, the life and the death.” Spring comes after winter and hope can return.
The members of the group seemed to jump to conclusions, but – suddenly – they noticed that the fourth co-Convenor, the other Father, didn’t talk since the beginning at all. He remained silent while the group began to fantasise about him: maybe he was dead or was killed by the group, maybe he was an absent father. Maybe he was too much powerful or helpless or both.
Finally, Giovanni Losito intervened in the discussion and opted for speaking English. “I feel old, obsolete. I feel like I belong to another time. When I was young there was the Vietnam War. We staged an anti-war demonstration in the streets and I was put under arrest for that. If we were more active, we could stop all these wars. The younger generation accept what happens and don’t try to change it, they are passive, conservatives.” he said.
Young people were filled with anger at the way that had been treated by old generation. A young woman demanded that old generation should accept responsibility for not having transmitted the skills at changing or influencing a situation. A member of older generation, reflecting on “urban warfare” between older and younger generations in the group, admitted they failed to transmit to young people skills at taking a more active role in the society and in their lives.
We could describe that stressful and conflicting situation only through the surreal tales in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll: “You are old, Father William” the young man said, “And your hair has become very white; and yet you incessantly stand on your head – Do you thing, at your age, it is right?” (Carrol pg. 124) … “The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs …” (Carrol pg. 202). The hedgehogs are like “the ball to play with”, “the power”, “an uphill struggle to be recognized”.
Anyway, the group finished hoping for the best.
Speaking English seemed to play different roles throughout the large group: “protests” against wordy Italian style, “challenge” of speaking in a foreign language, need of “fusion”, effort of “building a bridge” between different cultures, nationalities and generations, “desire” to be adopted.
Some people envied Carla Penna, who was in summertime in the other hemisphere.
“I wish I had a little sun too. I saw someone with much sun, maybe *** with her son. We are near to Easter, which is connected with peace, but also represents trauma and conflict. Jerusalem is the place of the conflict and the war. It is the perfect symbol of the large group”, Earl Hopper concluded.
CARROL, L. (1865). “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. Italian translation: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, Milano 1978, “Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie”.
III – Proceedings 2nd session
Following event observations
Earl Hopper starts the 2nd session talking about a matter of concern: are there too much people who have known one another for years?
Some people perhaps are a bit too familiar and exclude the others from the group.
Actually, many people who didn’t participate during the first session begin to talk.
The participants keep talking about war, but – somehow unexpectedly – we have perceived a lot of pain, anger and aggressiveness. Other themes come out:
- Frustration and loneliness, aggressive words (“Coming here I hoped for a moment of sharing”; “madmen lead the blind”)
- Hidden conflicts between generations (Elderly are accused for “strong defences” and “intellectualisation”. “Am I too much young for you?”)
- Everlasting trauma of people who have always lived in countries in conflict/at war and trans-generations trauma
- Feeling ashamed (“I think we are feeling ashamed in this group”; “I feel embarrassed to judge”; “I’m afraid to say an idiotic thing here”)
The words of a participant: “We have to be thinking citizens” seem to remind the group that they still have a lot of work to do.
However, finding a balance between regression and progression seems to be an exhausting work from the beginning to the end of large group.
- Talking about online mode (“I feel completely alone”; “I miss the comfort of the others’ bodies around me”) reminds also anger at staying in somehow masochistic situation as the large group by choice
- Dread of annihilation (“Our lives could change suddenly”, “Our homes could become unsafe”; “Suddenly we could face death, annihilation”; “If we were forced to leave our homes, what should we take with us?”)
- Traumatic memories of War World I and War World II. A participant replies: “It is the war among us that we don’t want to see”.
- Infantile regression – (“Desire to be adopted”; “I feel like I was a little child who makes mistakes in speaking”; “Everyone can see our confusion; we lost the way”). “Face it, Fred- you’re lost!” – Hopper, E. 2003b.
- Focus on inside and outside enemy (language, warlords, war) for protecting the group from infighting and taking it as–a-whole (“How much comfortable is the outside enemy! It allows us to ignore the war within us, the inside enemy. We make things right with the outside enemy!”)
- Denial of death (“The group is working for denying death.”)
- Western narration based on happy ending for nurturing illusory hopes.
At that point Earl Hopper talked openly and clearly about conflicts within the group: “conflicts among countries and ethnic groups, conflicts between generations and intense rivalries between siblings. The war is a defence. We are using war as a metaphor for what is happening here. It could be the same, even if it wasn’t any war. We join against the devil here, but war has been happening in the large group all the time.”
Laying the cards on the table seems to induce the members of the group to think and emerge from the experience of deep regression.
Conflicts between generations appear openly within the group. Facing conflicts in a group, which have boundaries of space and time, lead people towards progression?
Two others themes “birth” and “anger” emerge from the group: can a woman give birth in this world? What are the necessary conditions so that after a biological birth a psychological birth can arise? Is anger a defence? Can we avoid that anger became destructive?
Earl Hopper seems to connect birth and anger: “I wonder if a part of this anger is a way of defending themselves from depression or if we can nurture a mature hope … Anger is a defence against illusory hopes and depression”.
The members of the group seemed to agree with him, finally.
We would like to remark some key moments of the work of the others co-Convenors in the 2nd session and the role they have played in the large group also in terms of paternal and maternal code.
Carla Penna says in very emphatic way “I feel so much pain within the group. We always feel as though we were young in our minds, even if our body ages. We all share the pain, both the elderly and young people. Both elderly and children are often told: ‘shut up! go away!’…” She built a bridge between older and younger generation by sharing pain and death as common destiny of human beings.
Simona Negro talks about the Greek myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. “The myth explains changing of the seasons, the life and the death. So, it’s possible save the hope”. The group recognised that feelings of disappointment and anger are often based on fantasies of omnipotence.
Giovanni Losito admits frankly he was overwhelmed by feelings of helplessness and alienation, but thinking of his old battles he says: “If we were more active, we could stop all these wars. The younger generation accept what happens and don’t try to change it, they are passive, conservatives.” These words allow conflicts between older and younger generations to come out again, even though in really aggressive way. Anyway, each side in the conflict seemed was willing to accept own responsibility, each side could explain its reasons and no one died.
The large group concluded with an illuminating speech of Earl Hopper: “I wish I had a little sun too. I saw someone with much sun, maybe *** with her son. We are near to Easter, which is connected with peace, but also represents trauma and conflict. Jerusalem is the place of the conflict and the war. It is the perfect symbol of the large group”.
After talking non-stop for three hours, the Large Group was over.
IV – Reflections on the style of conducting
We would like to take some time to reflect on the way of work of the convenors, emphasising the interventions that seemed to modify the atmosphere within the group as well as to create a balance between the principle of regression and the principle of progression.
During the first 30 minutes of the session no convenor intervened, giving the group the opportunity to get in touch with a deep regression and with the defences resulting from psychotic anxieties, anguish of death and fear of annihilation.
In the first phase of the session sexuality and erotization as well as archaic figures (witches – Janare) seem to work as manic defences against anxieties associates with the depressive position and the threats to identity. The sub-group of Italian women “speak in tongues” to indicate their identity, excluding unconsciously from understanding the speaking English members who retaliate by looking for a scapegoat. They find it in simultaneous translation, that didn’t work, and in the language barrier or maybe in convenors and staff.
At the same time the group seems to ask convenors for boundaries that have been “violated, bombed” in a process of deep regression. The request is heard and accepted: “… We are in an event where we speak in Italian and English. We have experienced the unknown, the impossibility of free communication. We are making an effort to understand each other and that surprises us. The meaning of this war is very difficult to understand, this is a great challenge for us in the group and outside the group.” These words provided a holding and containing environment and let the group abandon the search for scapegoat and bear uncertainties of life and limits.
The group seems to oscillate between a schizo-paranoid position and a depressive position. Carla Penna emphasises the changes in the group: “It is hard containing bad and good images. It is very interesting to see how people perceive fireflies differently. We are projecting in the image of fireflies how difficult it is to be together and become a community, to bear pain, to share, to dialogue. It is painful especially now that there is an unexpected war.”
Images follow one another in the group express the primitive fear of annihilation as a response to an experience of profound helplessness. The air in the group seems to be polluted by a deep regression, there is a feeling of suffocation. Everyone is hungry and anger circulates. Simona Negro: “Here in the group the speaker has the feeling of still feeling alive, but there are people who do not speak and are afraid. We wonder if those who do not speak are alive or dead, if they have survived. Another fear is that of famine. There is concern that there is no food for everyone. Will we have enough to eat? Will we all starve? Are there any internal elements that animate the fantasies of cannibalism? Is the speaker taking the food of others?”
For the first time in the group there are a few seconds of silence that let silent participants be able to talk and take their own space. The climate changes and you can breathe.
The mothers / convenors seem to have played a role of great holding and containment of primitive anxieties and feed the group on breast milk, but it is not enough! The group invokes the logos of the father, the one who regulates the distance and puts a boundary.
Earl Hopper’s intervention seems to respond to this request, attempting to promote a symbolic thought about war rather than remain anchored to a level of reality: “… What would this large group be like if there were no war in Ukraine? How are we using it? It is very important to talk about it. Is there a failed dependency on an inadequate father?”
The matter triggers perplexity and anger in the group.
The conducting style in the second session becomes more active. The defences are interpreted and cards are lying on the table. The first intervention with which the session opens is by Earl Hopper, who underlines the climate of familiarity present in the group as a defence against the threat of psychotic fragmentation.
One participant says: “we must be thinking citizens!”. Thought is progression. The group oscillates between progression and regression. The fear of annihilation emerges as well as the fantasy of being adopted and becoming children to be protected. The enemy is external, the war is outside the group.
Earl Hopper takes on the role of interpreting such defences by promoting mature thinking. We cite some interventions that seem to have been fundamental both in making visible the conflicts within the group and for the psychic evolution of it: “… We talk about war, but we are using it as a metaphor for the processes that take place here and that would exist even if we were in times of peace…”, “… reality is a defence. Everyone here is united against the devil, but it is also true that wars take place in the large group. Can we feel something new?” … “I wonder if part of this anger is a way to defend against depression or if you can cultivate a mature hope: to have a child and create something new. Anger is a defence against illusory hope and depression.”
Final Reflections on the experience of the Large Groups
Vanna Decandia
Reflecting on the experience of the Large Group my mind goes to last year’s group, even then I was one of the observers, I think about points of contact and differences: last year one session, Italian staff, with a couple of conductors and three observers, with a number of participants of over 250, this year two sessions, a mixed staff (English / Italian language), two pairs of conductors and three observers, a number of participants around 80 people.
Both last year and this year it seems to me that the theoretical works presented by the speakers had a certain influence on the group. Last year E. Hopper, despite being one of the participants, seems to have been perceived, in some moments, as one of the conductors. This year I warned the most active couple of English-speaking conductors; G. Losito, present in both groups, last year had remained silent, this year he was “discovered” towards the end. Last year’s theme was covid, this year the war, both traumatic events. There was no lack of conflicts in both situations.
Regarding my being an observer, I remember the enthusiasm of last year and the fatigue of this year, also felt in the body at the moment of observation, perhaps due to the fast pace. After the drafting of a single report, last year, the entire staff always confronted each other until publication.
This year the experience was more complex: the three observers had several moments of confrontation first for the drafting of the full report, for the synthesis and for the revision in the light of the theoretical works, the group was experienced, then seen by out, almost dissected; as a group of observers we may have remained within those dynamics we were observing, the group did not seem finished and perhaps it still is not today. I felt a polarization in the group of observers, I asked myself where I was: was I excluded or was I a mediator? The whole is very intriguing.
Giuseppina De Fino
I have been taking part in a lot of Large Groups (L.G.) since 2007, but I was never given the opportunity to participate as a silent observer until 12 March 2022.
I can remember when I participated in a large group for the first time. More than 70 people were gathered in a beautiful room with a glass roof in a Liberty style theatre in front of the sea. I could see through the ceiling a perfect blue sky and the shadows of the dusk as the hours went by. The chairs were set out in concentric circles. Everything was new to me. I hadn’t known anyone before, except for my group analyst who was one of the convenors. I felt easy soon thanks to the beauty of the place and my group analyst’s reassuring presence. It was like living in a city: a promise of anonymity and a chance of going “out in the open” and speaking, but only if I liked it. I still remember a participant, who said that the room seemed like “a big brain”. The following experiences were not positive such as the first one. Sometimes I had some strange ideas about L.G. as a useless and cruel experiment in which the participants were like guinea pigs in labs and the only convenors’ tasks were to look at what was happening.
As an observer the reason why I listened carefully for any contribution to Large Group and I thought for a long time about participants and convenors was due to my previous experiences. Did Convenors know what to do with all that pain?
The most interesting part of the work was discussing with the other two observers, studying, trying to understand more about group dynamics and group analytical point of view. Studying always makes me feel alive. Observing a highly complex and someway terrifying experience as a Large Group, trying to identify proceedings, and studying the way of work of each convenor had been a privilege.
Anyway, I learned something new from experience (processes of Equivalence): I denied (or at least I minimised) the violence of conflicts within the large group, but after a few weeks within the small group of observers we recreated unconsciously the conflict between older and younger generation we saw in the Large Group. I have to specify that I belong to the old generation.
Maria Cristina Ferro
In describing the emotions and thoughts that passed through me as a silent observer, I realized that I had been very ambivalent concerning this work. On the one hand, I felt enthusiasm and passion and on the other, I felt fatigued and needed in some moments to put a distance.
There were many dynamics in the large group with which there was identification (equivalence), where I felt the risk of being overwhelmed by the vortex of urgency with the effort to elaborate, instead, a symbolic thought. Very important was the revival in the working staff of the generational conflict that emerged in the large group and I wondered, questioning my countertransference, how I felt like a “representative” of the new generation.
I felt the need for the new generation to be listened to and respected in the times and in the ways of acting, very different from those adopted by the old generation. I thought about the meaning of the word passivity and how much this resonated like a label, since the curiosity to know in reality how many questions the new generation asks itself or what it actively does, for example in sensitizing real or symbolic children to respect for our planet, to civil education, to the human rights of all men with the hope of a profound cultural change, has not emerged. I hoped for a sharing of thoughts beyond judgments and attacks, to welcome and listen to each other.
Simona Negro
When I was proposed to co-convene the two large group sessions, I felt a lot of emotions, I felt honoured for the opportunity offered to me and worried by the burden I would have to bear, passed through at the same time by desire and fear. It was also the first time I convened an online large group and I wondered if anything would change.
During the conduction, I think that seeing on the screen only 25 of the 80 people connected, on the one hand, reassured me, on the other, disturbed me because many remained silent and without video, so that I fantasized: did they still exist? Were they breathing? Were they alive?
One of the issues that struck me, was the technical element connected to the translation that became a significant aspect of the setting. In fact, on the one hand it has standardized the voices, flattened the emotional tones, eliminating the differences of gender, nationality and generations. On the other hand, it really made us experience the group-as-a-whole, so many voices as one.
Another element that continues to surprise and fascinate me was the emergence of the anthropological-cultural level, that substratum in which the myths, traditions, legends that unite peoples are inscribed. For example, the image of the Roman Empire (evoked by the initial dominance of the Italian language) and its decline, or the image of an arena where people watch amused and laugh while other people fight and die, or even the myth of Demeter and Persephone that describes the alternation of seasons, life and death.
From my point of view, the myth can offer a first unsaturated representation of the group events, it can be used as a protomodel of thought, because it is able to perform a function of bridge, a bond of knowledge between the members of the group, as it happened in the first communities of men and women. Consequently, the possibility of activating the mythopoietic function becomes a way to weave narratives with a universal but not univocal character, stories that describe generational transits, the cyclical passages of life, universal themes connected to birth, death, inner, relational and social transformations.
The Large Group is a powerful tool to feel and think, to process collective traumas, to evoke ancient myths and tell new stories and promote the reconstruction of social bonds.
Giovanni Losito
Observation is a fundamental category in scientific research, not only in reductionist quantitative approach but also in complex qualitative epistemology.
In Group Analysis there is almost a dogma that observation is participant and observers should sit in the circle among members, but in Italy a model of silent observers in the large group developed. They are silent and make a verbatim written report. Silence doesn’t mean they are not participants but only concentrating better on writing minutes in the service of +k . So, in further meetings, the staff can study the group dynamics more profoundly, reflect on the relationships and enucleate the themes of the social unconscious. It is a way of keeping the memory of the group, otherwise too temporary and ephemeral.
We had many meetings of accurate reflections to mentalize the text with rigor. According to me in this procedure of reflection on the text(ture). The staff passed from schizoparanoid position to depressive position. A process of synthesis. Bion quotes H. Poincaré in 1908 to explain how creative thinking happens suddenly and unexpectedly. Even in mathematical research. So, our written report made the difference. As in a film the movie director meets the movie editor and after a process of exchange the work of art comes out, the staff was writing this scientific paper looking from the different perspectives of each member.
Carla Penna
The Italian event was a special moment, allowing me to present my research, just before launching my book on crowds and large groups. In my lecture, I introduced a metaphor comparing large-group work with Didi-Huberman’s book Survival of Fireflies. To me, it was an excellent metaphor to honour large-group professionals for promoting dialogue and democracy in times of conflict, by comparing them with surviving fireflies. Curiously, through slang and cultural differences, my metaphor took different paths, that initially disconcerted me. However, the experience allowed me to understand the power of microcultures and context in large-group work and the importance of dialogue to avoid misunderstandings by creating new meanings and culture, as de Maré postulated.
The preparation, the event per se, the debriefing and further writing work represented deep learning on how to work in large groups and how to make good use of the tool in different contexts. The combination of theory and technique with the staff group interactions in the here and now enabled me to learn about how to bridge cultural differences, language, generations and ways of thinking and feeling in a containing space. It is not an easy task, because in large group work personal and societal feelings involving participants and staff are at stake, however, the careful management/ dynamic administration of the whole process is extremely important. In this regard, it is not only about the role of the conductors/conveners but also about the important work of the observers, offered by the Italian colleagues, as part of their way of doing large-group work.
I think we should always include silent observers in large-group work, especially in the training context. I was delighted to work with a staff of professionals belonging to different generations which made our learning and interaction a lively process. I am grateful to all of them, the large-group international participants, to Earl Hopper and Alfonso D’Auria for chairing the event.
The work must continue! We need large-group work!
Earl Hopper
The study of large groups is indebted to the continuing involvement in it of our colleagues in Italy, who prefer what I have termed a “prime ministerial model” with its own strengths and weaknesses, the strengths being more or less obvious, and the weaknesses being mainly a matter of how much time is necessary for planning the event and then for a constructive debriefing. I wish that all the participants in this event had been able to join us for our review discussions.
Actually, this would be possible in a “fishbowl” meeting, and perhaps we should consider this for next time. I am humbled by learning from the other convenors and from the silent observers how much I missed while “under fire”. In the future I will try to speak more concisely and less allusively. Although my intention is to provoke more “completion” from the participants, I can see that especially in an international group who do not share the same primary language, this style of interpretation can be somewhat misleading, perhaps even obfuscating rather than clarifying.
I find myself thinking about several themes. One is the way that “fireflies” personified involves the vitality of group process. Another is the importance of the negotiation and ultimate specification of a contracted primary task, which is sort of like discipline in the making of mature art or even in prayer. This matter of discipline is particularly relevant when working with several generations of international participants and having to respond to matters of intersectionality, mainly because there is so much splitting and projective and introjective identification concerning thinking and feeling.
The history of large group work spans approximately seventy-five years. Participants have become more comfortable and familiar with it. However, such familiarity may have made our work even more complex, because the resistances against insights into the anxieties aroused in inevitable collective and personal regression are more difficult to analyse authentically.
Alfonso D’Auria
The organization of this Large Group event, together with Carla Penna and Earl Hopper, was the evolution of a process that began last year with the event “The Return of the Scapegoat. Covid Syndemic in the unconscious life of groups”. The initial idea that led to this collaboration was aimed at creating a “bridge”, a “meeting” that would favor communication, knowledge and the exchange of experiences between the Italian and international group-analytic community.
The two events had different formats: last year’s lasted only half a day, with a lecture, a question time and only one Large Group session; this year’s one lasted a whole day, focusing more on experiential and “direct dialogue” between the two communities, through the experience of two Large Groups. Since the theme of this year’s event is the Large Group itself, the theoretical part served to help the participants to learn more about the tool/container we used to get in touch and activate communication between the two group analytic communities.
I consider this year’s format a “pilot” experience that can be exported in a more systematic and institutional way to the various international communities, especially in those situations where there are group-analytic communities that do not have sufficient knowledge of the English language. I am making this specification because obviously GASi, Hopper and Penna and other international colleagues already “spread” group-analytic culture all over the world but, with the online mode and with an organized “planning” in mind, it could be activated (as already discussed with Hopper and Penna) an itinerant experiential format, which focuses on the Large Group, which aims to “involve” colleagues and national group-analytic institutions.
As for my role and my position as chair of the event, I can share the honor, enthusiasm and complexity that I experienced in helping to carry this project forward. One of the fundamental aspects required by this role and this function was to constantly maintain attention on the structure and frame of the container (the event); constantly staying on the border between being involved in the process and keeping attention on the technical and organizational aspects; that is, as can be seen from this report, being part of the staff but at the same time, having the role of “organizer”/chair, taking care of the staff group.
Obviously the success of the event and of the reworking process would not have been possible without Hopper and Penna, especially in the most difficult moments during which, both in the initial organization phase and in the post-event elaboration phase, we had to face some institutional enactments in the staff group, which we managed to overcome thanks to their long professional experience and great analytical skills.
Alfonso D’Auria: Psychologist, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Group Analyst, Private Practice in Rome (Italy), Full Member of GASI (Group Analytic Society international), Full Member of IL CERCHIO – Italian Association of Group Analysis, Full Member of COIRAG (Italian Confederation of Organizations for Analytic Research on Groups), Professor at SRBA (Roman Analytic Balint School). alfonsodauria@gmail.com
Vanna Decandia: Psychologist, Psychotherapist, member of IL CERCHIO – Italian Association of Group Analysis, Full Member of COIRAG (Italian Confederation of Organizations for Analytic Research on Groups). decandiavanna@libero.it
Maria Cristina Ferro: Psychologist, Psychoanalytic Psychoterapist, Group Analyst, Private Practice in Matera ( Italy), Supporting member of IL CERCHIO- Italian Association of Group Analysis. mariacristina.ferro@tiscali.it
Giuseppina De Fino: Retired Doctor; Nephrologist; Psychotherapist; Member of IL CERCHIO – Italian Association of Group Analysis. giuseppinadefino@hotmail.it
Earl Hopper PhD: Psychoanalyst, group analyst and organisational consultant in private practice in London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, an Honorary Member of the Institute of Group Analysis, an Honorary Member of the Group Analytic Society International and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association. A former President of the International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes (IAGP), and a former Chairman of the Association of Independent Psychoanalysts of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is the author and editor of many books and articles in psychoanalysis, sociology and group analysis. He is the Editor of The New International Library of Group Analysis for Routledge. earl@drhopper.co.uk
Giovanni Losito: Full member GASI; member AGPA; member div 39, APA, Whashington DC. giovanni194608@gmail.com
Simona Negro: Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Group Analyst, Convener of Large Group, Full Member and Scientific Referent of IL CERCHIO – Italian Association of Group Analysis, Full Member GASI (Group Analytic Society International), Professor of training in Rome and Member of COIRAG (Confederation of Italian Organizations for Analytical Research on Groups). dr.ssanegro@gmail.com
Carla Penna PhD: Psychoanalyst and group analyst in Brazil. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Group Analytic Society International and co-chair of the Analytic Section of IAGP. She is a past president of the Brazilian Group Psychotherapy Association and the Group Analytic Psychotherapy Society of the State of Rio de Janeiro. She is a former Visiting Professor of Medical Psychology at the University State of Rio de Janeiro. She is co-editor of the Journal Cadernos de Psicanálise in Brazil. She published in Portuguese the book Inconsciente Social [Social Unconscious] and in 2022 is publishing in NILGA From Crowd Psychology to Dynamics of Large Groups: Historical, Theoretical and Practical Considerations, by Routledge. drcarlapenna@gmail.com